Google’s updates: what small businesses should actually do

Google changes its ranking systems constantly — thousands of adjustments a year, a handful large enough to get a name. The named ones generate a predictable cycle: panic, speculation, and a great deal of advice written by people who do not know either.

Here is a calmer way to handle it.

First, work out whether anything actually happened

Traffic moves for ordinary reasons: seasonality, a public holiday, a competitor running ads, school holidays, a wet fortnight if you do outdoor work. A 20 per cent dip over a week is usually weather, not Google.

1. 01Open Search Console and compare the last 28 days against the previous 28.
2. 02Look at clicks and impressions separately. Impressions steady with clicks down means you are being shown and not clicked — often an AI summary rather than a ranking loss.
3. 03Check whether the drop is sitewide or on specific pages. Sitewide suggests a technical problem. A few pages suggests those pages lost relevance.
4. 04Compare year on year, not just month on month, if you have the history.

What updates have consistently rewarded

The specifics change. The direction has not, for years.

• Content written by someone who knows the subject. A plumber writing about hot water systems beats a copywriter paraphrasing other articles.
• Pages that load fast on a phone. Repeatedly, in every update, for a decade.
• Sites that answer the question the search asked rather than the question the business wanted to answer.
• Businesses that visibly exist. Real address, real reviews, real photos, a real name attached to the work.

What they have consistently punished

• Thin pages built to capture a keyword rather than to be read.
• Near-duplicate pages — the classic being fifty suburb pages with one word swapped.
• Bought links, at increasing cost.
• Content generated at volume with nothing to say.

If you have never done any of those, most updates will pass over you. The businesses that get hit hard are usually the ones that took a shortcut and got away with it for a while.

If you genuinely did drop

Work out which pages lost, and what they were ranking for. Then read them as a customer would.

1. 01Is this page actually useful, or is it a keyword with paragraphs around it?
2. 02Would someone who does this job for a living find it accurate?
3. 03Does it answer the search, or does it circle it?
4. 04Is there anything on it only you could have written — a real price, a real job, a real constraint?

That last one is the most reliable fix available and the one almost nobody does. Specificity is hard to copy and easy to reward.

What not to do

1. 01Do not delete pages in a panic. You can lose rankings you still had.
2. 02Do not buy links to recover. This converts a dip into a penalty.
3. 03Do not rebuild the site. A rebuild during a ranking drop makes the cause impossible to identify.
4. 04Do not switch agencies in week one. Give whoever you are paying a fortnight and a clear question.

And the practical hedge

Run Google Ads alongside organic. Not forever, and not instead — but an update that halves your organic traffic is survivable if it is not your only channel. Ads give you a dial you control on a week where Google changed one you do not.