Google October 2023 Core Update (5 October 2023): What Changed and How to Recover

The Google October 2023 core update started on 5 October 2023 and finished on 19 October 2023, a rollout of just under 14 days. It was a broad reassessment of quality and relevance with no specific target, and it ran entirely inside the October 2023 spam update window, which makes attribution the hardest part of any diagnosis. If you lost visibility that month, first rule out a spam problem, then treat it as a content quality question.

This is one entry in my full list of Google algorithm updates. Here is what was confirmed, how to separate this update from the spam update beside it, and what I would change on an affected site.

What the October 2023 core update changed

Core updates are changes to the main systems Google uses to rank results. They do not target a tactic or a type of site. Instead, Google reassesses how well pages answer queries compared with everything else it has indexed, and rankings shift as a result.

For October 2023, Google gave no extra explanation beyond its standard core updates documentation. That documentation makes two points worth repeating, because site owners often miss them:

• There is no specific fix for a core update. You cannot remove one bad thing and get the rankings back.
• A ranking drop does not necessarily mean a page has a problem. Other pages may simply have been judged more useful for that query.

What makes this update notable is its context rather than its content. It was the second of three core updates in about three months (August, October and November 2023), and the November update came only two weeks after this one finished. Google said the November update improved a different core system from the one changed in October, so the two should be read as separate events.

Timeline

Who was affected

Google did not say which kinds of sites would move, and it never does for core updates. Search Engine Land reported clear swings around 10 to 12 October and again the following weekend. Beyond that, the honest answer is that attribution was muddy: the spam update began a day earlier and ended a day later, so any movement in the window could be either one.

In my experience, the sites that tend to feel broad core updates most are those with large volumes of similar pages, content written to match keywords rather than questions, and pages where the main content is thin compared with ads or navigation. That is general observation, not something Google said about this update.

How to tell if the October 2023 core update hit your site

The diagnosis here has one extra step compared with most core updates: separating it from the spam update.

1. Use clean comparison windows. In Search Console, compare 21 September to 4 October 2023 with 20 October to 1 November 2023. Stop before 2 November, or the November core update will contaminate the data.
2. Rule out spam first. Check Manual actions and Security issues. Search for pages you did not publish, scraped copies, or cloaking. If you find a concrete violation, read the spam update guidance instead; a spam demotion has a specific thing to fix, a core decline does not.
3. Find the pattern in the losses. Export pages and queries and sort by click change. Do losses cluster in one template (category pages, blog posts, location pages) or one topic? A cluster tells you where to look.
4. Check positions, not just clicks. If average position held but clicks fell, the cause is more likely a SERP feature or demand change than the core update.
5. Look at who replaced you. For your ten biggest lost queries, compare the pages now ranking with yours. Are they more specific, more current, written by someone with obvious experience?
6. Check tracking and seasonality. Compare with October 2022 and confirm your analytics tag did not change.

How to recover from the October 2023 core update

Google’s guidance is to make broad, sustained improvements to quality rather than quick technical tweaks, and to judge pages against its self-assessment questions on helpful, reliable, people-first content. Here is how I turn that into work:

1. Pick the right pages. Start with the pages that lost the most clicks and still target queries you care about. Ignore pages that never earned much.
2. Re-read each page as a searcher. Does it answer the query in the first screen? Does it say anything the top three results do not? If not, it needs more than editing.
3. Add real expertise and experience. Specific examples, original photos or data, clear authorship and a reason the reader should trust the writer. This is what E-E-A-T means in practice.
4. Consolidate overlap. Several thin pages on the same topic usually do worse than one strong page. Merge them and 301 the old URLs.
5. Prune what cannot be saved. Pages with no purpose for users can be removed or noindexed, which also makes the rest of the site easier to assess.
6. Wait for the next core update. Recovery most often shows at a later core update, though some movement between updates is possible as systems refresh. Do not undo good changes after two weeks of no movement.

Much of this is page-level work. My on-page optimisation services cover exactly this kind of rewrite and consolidation.

Is it still relevant today?

The October 2023 update itself is long finished and later core updates have reassessed every site many times since. Its lasting relevance is twofold. First, if you are reading old traffic reports, a dip in mid-October 2023 has two possible causes, and you should not assume it was this one. Second, Google’s core update guidance has not changed in substance: there is still no quick fix, and quality improvements are still judged over time. The March 2024 core update went further by folding the helpful content system into core ranking, so the same standards now apply through core updates.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Google Search Status Dashboard: ranking incident history
• Google Search Central: core updates documentation
• Search Engine Land: core update coverage
• Keywords Everywhere: October 2023 core update

If your traffic dropped in October 2023 and you want to know whether it was quality, spam or something else, request a free audit. My SEO audit services start by isolating the cause before recommending any changes.