October 2023 Google Algorithm Update Impact

On October 5, 2023, Google released its October 2023 Core Update. This update arrived in what has been a “sea of volatility” with the release of the October 2023 Spam Update just a day earlier. Further, the October 2023 Core Update came on the heels of the September 2023 Helpful Content Update, which finished rolling out just days earlier. 

Of course, and perhaps most notably, the October 2023 Core Update was released less than a month after the August 2023 Core Update had completed its rollout. This naturally begs the question as to the relationship between the August and October 2023 Core Updates. 

Let’s have a look at it all. 

The October 2023 Core Update Rollout: A Return to Normal

If you recall, the rollout of the August 2023 Core Update was a bit atypical. With a core update, there is generally a clear and discernable “peak” and spike in rank volatility. 

The environment around the August update was already quite volatile; as a result, we didn’t see the same sort of vivid spike in rank fluctuations. 

However, the October 2023 Core Update, despite the various updates released in the days and weeks before it, saw a return to the usual trajectory displayed during a core update.

Accordingly, the Semrush Sensor showed peak volatility on October 10, with a secondary spike happening toward the end of the update (which was completed on October 20). 

Analyzing the Impact of the October 2023 Core Update

With the rollout “out of the way,” let’s dive into the data on the overall impact the update had on rankings. 

Traditionally, the first metric we look at is “Peak Volatility.” Essentially, how drastic was the increase of the update on rank volatility on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., the Semrush Sensor’s scale)? 

You can see in the chart above that the level of peak volatility during the August 2023 Core Update was far higher across all verticals. 

However, as I mentioned earlier, the rollout of the August 2023 Core Update was “peculiar” as there was a tremendous amount of volatility around it. Thus, we really don’t know how much of the “peak volatility” was the update per se vs. other “algorithmic events.” 

So, it’s hard to look toward peak volatility as a strong signal in this case, as the rollouts of these two updates were drastically different. 

What will give us a bit of a better understanding is the relative increase in rank volatility. Meaning, compared to the baseline data, what did the relative increase in volatility look like? 

In this case, the August 2023 Core Update, overall, saw a greater increase in volatility relative to the reporting baseline than the October 2023 Core Update.

This, however, was not true across all verticals. While the overall increase in rank volatility during the August 2023 Core Update was .8 points higher than the October 2023 Core Update, there was inconsistency when looking at the specific verticals. 

For example, the Finance, Shopping, and Arts and Entertainment verticals saw greater increases in volatility during the October 2023 Core Update. 

One question we have to answer in order to get a better sense of the impact of the update is, what did the volatility swings themselves look like? 

The average number of positions gained/lost during the October 2023 Core Update was roughly 2.5 positions. This stands in contrast to the August 2023 Core Update, where the average was just over 3 positions. 

However helpful an “average” is, at the end of the day it’s still an average. To help get a better idea of how drastic the rank swings were, have a look at the percentage of results ranking among the top 20 that prior to the update did not:

These numbers are very similar to what we saw during the August 2023 Core Update.

To go a bit further down the rabbit hole, let’s look at just the top 10 results to see what percentage of them did not even crack the top 20 ranking positions prior to the update. 

With the October 2023 Core Update,roughly 10.5% of the URLs ranking among the top 10 results after the update hit did not even crack the top 20 prior to its rollout. Again, these are very similar numbers to the August 2023 Core Update. 

For the record, this continues a trend where the ranking swings seen during the more recent core updates are a bit more drastic than in the past. 

To sum it all up, there are some signals that point to the overall impact of the October 2023 Core Update being less impactful than the August 2023 Core Update. At the same time, there are also signs that the fluctuations seen in October, though perhaps “less” overall, were just as drastic as August’s core update. 

Was the October 2023 Core Update a Reversal of the August 2023 Core Update? 

Now for what you all came here for: Was the October 2023 Core Update meant to reverse some of what Google implemented in the algorithm with the August 2023 Core Update? 

I just want to say that no one can really definitively answer that other than perhaps Google. 

All I can do is offer my own anecdotal opinion based on some very limited data analysis and my SEO “spidey-sense” (aka my intuition after analyzing these things for the past 10 years). 

With that said, are you going to find cases where there seems to be a reversal of ranking fortunes? Of course you are. 

This happens with all official updates. 

Take the case below for the keyword “direct lenders for bad credit installment loans.” It would seem (all things being equal, which they may not be) that the ranking loss this URL saw during the August 2023 Core Update was reversed with the September 2023 Helpful Update, with the October 2023 Core Update seemingly slightly reversing that. 

Same with the keyword “business loans australia,” where it appears the ranking loss that came at the end of the September 2023 Helpful Update was (perhaps) reversed with the October 2023 Core Update:

For the record, it’s not entirely uncommon for a site or page to be rewarded by one type of update (i.e., core update vs. review update vs. helpful content update, etc.) but “hit” by another kind of update. Glenn Gabe frequently talks about “dueling machine learning systems.” 

At the same time, you will find scores of instances where ranking patterns did not change with either the August 2023 Core Update or September 2023 Helpful Update, but only in alignment with the October 2023 Core Update. Such was the case with the URL shown below for the keyword “colon cancer stage 3”:

It’s the same pattern we see below for the keyword “lower back injections”:

Just to highlight an example at the domain level, there are going to be cases where you see a reversal from the August 2023 Core Update and there are going to be cases where you only see a ranking shift with the October 2023 Core Update. 

You’re also going to see cases where the ranking trajectory was consistent across all three of the recent updates (four if you count the October 2023 Spam Update) like you see below: 

Google has indicated that the two updates are not related, and I would take them at their word. From what I see, everything looks fairly “typical” of what you would expect. As I mentioned, there are reversals from the August 2023 Core Update, but there always are with any core update. I don’t see anything that would definitively show an underlying and intrinsic connection between the August and October 2023 Core Updates. 

Sailing the SEO Ship in a Sea of Volatility 

One last note, if you have seen ranking changes over the last few months and you think it is because of a Google update, it’s important to try your best to isolate which update. What the core updates might “be after” is not necessarily the same focus that a Helpful Content Update is looking to “achieve.” It’s certainly not what the spam updates are honing in on. For the record, if you are engaging in spammy practices and the October 2023 Spam Update impacted your site, I think it’s a signal to rethink your overall approach to web content. In any event, understanding what impacted you (and when) is an obvious point of consideration for any SEO and site owner.