If your rankings or traffic moved sharply in the last day, the May 2022 core update is the most likely reason. Google started rolling it out on 25 May 2022. It is a broad change to how Google ranks pages, not a penalty, and Google expects it to take about one to two weeks to finish.
The short answer for most site owners: don’t make big changes yet. Watch your data, write down what moves, and wait for the rollout to end. Below, I explain what Google has confirmed, what is still unknown, and the checks I’m running right now.
What Google Has Confirmed About the May 2022 Core Update
Google announced the update on Wednesday, 25 May 2022, on its Search Central Twitter account and in a post on the Google Search Central blog by Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Liaison for Search.
Here is what we know for sure:
- Start date: 25 May 2022, during the day in the US.
- Rollout time: Google says about 1–2 weeks to fully roll out. So the end could come any time up to early or mid-June.
- Scope: it is a global update. It affects all regions and all languages, and all types of content.
- Not a penalty: Google repeats that core updates don’t target specific sites or pages.
- Guidance: Google points site owners back to its existing advice on core updates. There is no new checklist for this one.
Google has not said what share of searches are affected. It has also not named any type of site, topic or signal that this update focuses on. If you read a claim like “this update targets affiliate sites”, treat it as a guess until Google says otherwise.
Why the Timing Matters
This is the first broad core update of 2022. The last one was the November 2021 core update, which started on 17 November and finished on 30 November 2021. That gap of about six months is normal for Google, which runs broad core updates a few times a year.
A long gap means two things. Sites that improved their content since November may finally see a lift. And sites that have slipped behind competitors may see that show up all at once.
What a Core Update Actually Is
Google changes its ranking systems every day, mostly in small ways nobody notices. A core update is different. It is a big change to the main ranking systems, so many results move at once.
Google’s own way of explaining it is a “top 100 movies” list. If you rewrite that list a few years later, some films drop. They didn’t get worse. Newer or better films came out, and the list was rethought. Core updates work the same way: your page can drop even if nothing is wrong with it, because Google now judges other pages as more useful for that search.
That is why I don’t call a core update drop a “penalty”. A penalty is a manual action (a human reviewer at Google flags a site for breaking the rules), and it shows up as a notice in Search Console. A core update gives you no notice at all.
Core Updates vs Other Google Updates
It is easy to blame the wrong update. Google has run several named updates in the last few months, and each one looks at different things.
| Update | What it looks at | Who usually notices |
|---|---|---|
| Broad core update (May 2022) | Overall relevance and quality across all searches | Any site, any topic |
| Product reviews update (March 2022) | English-language product review content | Review and affiliate sites |
| Page experience update (desktop, from February 2022) | Core Web Vitals, HTTPS and similar signals on desktop | Usually small, tie-breaker effects |
| Spam updates | Pages that break Google’s spam policies | Sites using spam tactics |
If you run a review site, read my notes on the March 2022 product reviews update too. Some review sites were still moving from that update, and the two can be hard to separate in your data.
What to Check Right Now (Without Overreacting)
The first few days of a rollout are noisy. Rankings can go up, come back down and settle somewhere else by the end. In my experience, the worst decisions in SEO are made on day two of a core update.
So right now I only do checks that help me understand what is happening. I don’t rewrite pages, delete content or change site structure until the rollout is done.
Here is the order I follow:
- Mark the start date. Add an annotation for 25 May 2022 in your analytics tool and in your own change log. If you are running GA4 alongside Universal Analytics, as I explained in my guide to setting up GA4 next to UA, note it in both so your reports line up later.
- Rule out technical problems. Open Search Console and check the Index Coverage report for a sudden jump in errors or excluded pages. Check the Manual actions report too. A broken robots.txt or a noindex tag pushed by mistake can look just like an update drop.
- Check your own recent changes. Did you launch a redesign, move URLs or change templates in the last few weeks? If so, that is a more likely cause than the update.
- Look at Search Console, not just analytics. Open the Performance report and compare clicks, impressions and average position. Search Console data is usually a day or two behind, so give it time to catch up.
- Find where the movement is. Filter by page and by query. A drop across the whole site tells a different story from a drop on ten pages.
- Write it down and wait. Save a snapshot of your top pages and queries now. You will compare against it after the rollout ends.
Don’t Trust One Day of Data
Daily traffic swings for many reasons: weekdays, holidays, news, the weather. One bad day during a rollout tells you very little.
I like to look at weekly totals, compared with the same days of the week before the update started. That removes a lot of the noise. It also stops you from reacting to a dip that fixes itself by the weekend.
How to Tell If the Update Affected Your Site
Once the rollout finishes, you can do a proper before-and-after comparison. Until then, you are looking for early signs. Here is what I look for in Search Console.
Signs It Is the Core Update
- The change starts on or after 25 May, not before.
- Average position drops for many queries, but your pages are still indexed and still crawled normally.
- Impressions change along with clicks. If impressions hold but clicks fall, the cause may be a change in how the results page looks, not your rankings.
- Similar pages move together. For example, all your “how to” guides drop, or all your category pages rise.
Signs It Is Something Else
- The drop started days before 25 May. Google’s John Mueller has said that announced core updates start rolling out when they are announced, not earlier.
- Pages have dropped out of the index entirely, or the Index Coverage report shows new errors.
- Only one country or one device type is affected, while everything else is stable.
- The drop lines up with a site change, a server problem or a tracking code change.
If your drop matches the second list, fix that problem first. No amount of content work will help if Google can’t crawl your pages.
What to Do If Your Rankings Dropped
Google’s advice for core updates has not changed with this one. It is in its post What site owners should know about Google’s core updates. The main message is simple: there may be nothing to “fix”, but you should focus on offering the best content you can.
Google offers a set of self-assessment questions to help with that. They fall into four groups.
Content and Quality
- Does the page give original information, research or analysis?
- Does it cover the topic fully, rather than in a thin way?
- Does it add real value beyond what other pages already say, or does it just rewrite them?
- Does the headline describe the page honestly, without exaggerating?
Expertise
- Would a reader trust this page? Is it clear who wrote it and why they know the subject?
- Are facts accurate and easy to check?
- Would you be happy relying on this page for advice about money or health, if it covers those topics?
This is where E-A-T comes in. It stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and it comes from Google’s search quality rater guidelines. Raters don’t change rankings directly. But Google says its systems aim to reward the same kind of content that raters would judge as showing strong E-A-T.
Presentation and Production
- Is the page free of spelling and style mistakes?
- Does it look like it was made with care, or mass-produced?
- Are there so many ads that they get in the way of the main content?
- Does it work well on a phone?
Comparative
- Does the page give more value than the other pages ranking for the same search?
- Was it written for people, or mostly to rank for a keyword?
When I audit pages after a core update, the comparative questions are where I spend most of my time. I search the main query, open the pages that now rank above mine and ask honestly what they do better. Often the answer is plain: they answer the question faster, they are more current, or they show more first-hand knowledge.
A Practical Example
Say you run a home improvement blog and your guide on “how to fix a leaking tap” dropped from position 3 to position 9. You look at the new top results.
You notice they show the answer in the first few lines, list the tools needed and explain the steps for different tap types. Your guide starts with 300 words on why leaks happen and covers only one tap type. That gap is your to-do list. You aren’t chasing an algorithm here. You are making the page more useful than the pages that now beat it.
Common Mistakes After a Core Update
I usually see the same mistakes after every core update. Avoiding them can save you months.
- Changing everything during the rollout. If you change pages now, you won’t know whether a later recovery came from your changes or from the update settling.
- Deleting large amounts of content in a panic. Removing pages can help when they are truly thin or out of date. But deleting pages that still bring traffic just because rankings dipped often makes things worse.
- Chasing technical fixes for a content problem. Speeding up your site is good, but a core update drop is rarely about page speed. Core Web Vitals are part of page experience, which I covered in my post on page experience coming to desktop, and Google treats them as a smaller factor than great content.
- Disavowing links out of fear. A core update is not a link penalty. I’d only look at the disavow tool if you have a manual action for unnatural links, or a clear history of paid or spammy links.
- Trusting every “winners and losers” list. Third-party tools are useful for spotting volatility, but they track a sample of keywords. Your own Search Console data is what matters for your site.
How Long Recovery Can Take
This is the part nobody likes to hear. Google says that content hit by a core update may not recover, even after you improve it, until the next broad core update.
Google also says it runs smaller core updates that it doesn’t announce, and these can help some content recover between big ones. But you should plan for months, not weeks. And Google is clear that improving a page doesn’t guarantee it will recover. Other sites may simply be better for that search now.
My rule of thumb: make changes because they make the page better for readers, not because you expect a fast ranking return. Real improvements tend to pay off over several updates, even if the next one doesn’t reward them straight away.
If Your Rankings Went Up
Gains during a rollout can also reverse before it ends. So I don’t celebrate until a week or so after Google confirms the rollout is complete.
If your gains hold, look at which pages improved and what they have in common. That tells you what Google now values for your topics. It is often a good guide for which older pages to update next.
What I’m Watching Over the Next Two Weeks
While the May 2022 core update rolls out, I’m keeping my approach calm and simple:
- A short check of Search Console every few days, focused on top pages and top queries.
- Weekly comparisons, not daily ones.
- Watching Google’s Search Central blog and Twitter account for the post confirming the rollout is complete.
- No major content or structure changes on sites I manage until then.
After the rollout ends, I compare the two weeks after it with the two weeks before it started. That is the comparison I trust for deciding what to do next.
Conclusion: Watch, Record, Then Improve
The May 2022 core update is a broad, global change to Google’s ranking systems that started on 25 May 2022 and should take about one to two weeks to finish. It isn’t a penalty, and Google hasn’t named any specific target.
For now, record your baseline, rule out technical problems and resist the urge to make big changes. When the rollout is done, compare your data properly and use Google’s self-assessment questions to improve the pages that lost ground.
If you want a wider plan for the rest of the year, my SEO checklist for 2022 sets out where to focus once the dust settles.
