If you've noticed your website behaving a bit oddly in Google this week, or a quieter week than usual for enquiries, there may be a simple explanation. On Tuesday 10 November, Google started rolling out its November 2026 core update.
Core updates tend to cause a lot of excitement in the SEO world, and a fair amount of panic among business owners. Some people's rankings go up, some go down, and some don't move at all. The most important advice I can give you is this: whatever happens over the next fortnight, don't start rewriting your website in a hurry.
Here's what's going on, and what I'd suggest instead.
What Google has announced
Google posted the news on its Search Status Dashboard and described it as "a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites." It applies globally and in all languages, so UK websites are included, and Google says it "may take up to 2 weeks to complete." That puts the finish line somewhere around 24 November (Search Engine Journal; Search Engine Roundtable).
This is Google's third core update of 2026. The last one ran from late May into early June.
So what is a core update?
Google is constantly tinkering with how it decides which websites to show, and most of those changes are small enough that nobody notices. A few times a year, it makes bigger, broader changes to the main systems that rank websites. Those are the core updates.
Google's own explanation is quite helpful. In its guide to core updates, it compares it to keeping a list of your 20 favourite restaurants. If you wrote the list a few years ago, some new restaurants have opened since, and you might now rate some old favourites higher or lower than before. The list changes, and Google says the restaurants that drop down "aren't necessarily 'bad'; there are just other restaurants that make your top 20."
That's the key point. A core update isn't a penalty. It doesn't target specific websites, and if your site drops a few places, it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. It may just mean Google now thinks another page answers the question slightly better.
Google also says that "most sites don't need to worry about core updates and may not even realize one has happened." For a lot of local businesses, that will be true.
Why you shouldn't make changes during the rollout
While an update is rolling out, rankings can bounce around from one day to the next. A page that drops on Thursday might be back where it was by Monday. If you rush in and start changing things in the middle of that, two problems follow.
First, you might "fix" something that wasn't broken. Google specifically recommends avoiding changes to content that's already performing well.
Second, you won't be able to tell what caused what. If your rankings recover, was it your changes, or just the update settling down? You'll never know.
I'd also be wary of anyone who gets in touch over the next couple of weeks offering to "recover" your rankings from the core update. Google's advice is to avoid "quick fix" changes, and to make improvements that make sense for your customers in the long term. Anyone promising a fast fix for a core update is promising something Google says doesn't exist.
What to do once it has finished
Google's guidance is to wait until the update has finished rolling out, and then wait "at least a full week" after that before looking at your data. So realistically, early December is the time to look.
If you have Google Search Console set up (Google's free tool that shows how your website performs in search), Google suggests comparing a week after the update with a week before it started. Then look at your most important pages and searches, and ask whether any drop is small or large.
Google's own examples are useful here. Dropping from position 2 to position 4 is a small drop, and Google says there's "no need to take drastic action." Dropping from position 4 to position 29 is a large one, and worth a closer look.
If you do see a big, sustained drop, Google recommends looking honestly at your website as a whole, ideally with help from someone who isn't involved in the business. Is it genuinely helpful? Does it answer the questions your customers actually ask? Is it clear who you are, where you are and what you do? Google has a list of self-assessment questions that's worth a read, and most of them are just common sense written down.
And if you've never set up Search Console, now's a good time to do it, so that you have something to compare against next time. (It's also where the new data on Google's AI answers is likely to appear, which I wrote about in The UK Is Making Google Show Whether Its AI Answers Send You Customers.)
A word for anyone with a brand-new website
By coincidence, Google's John Mueller made a couple of comments this week that are worth passing on, especially if your website is new.
Someone asked him why their new site wasn't being fully indexed (added to Google's catalogue of web pages) as quickly as they'd hoped. His reply was that "it can take time for the systems to understand the unique value of it all," and that it's good to make sure the site is "really top notch (quality over quantity)" (Search Engine Roundtable, 10 November).
A day later, he said that if a large share of a site's pages are listed in Search Console as "Crawled, currently not indexed" or "Discovered, currently not indexed", it usually means "Google's quality systems are unconvinced about your site" (Search Engine Roundtable, 11 November).
In my opinion, the lesson for small businesses is a reassuring one. A new website with ten genuinely useful pages is better than one with a hundred thin ones written to tick boxes. Publishing loads of near-identical pages (one for every town within 30 miles, say) is unlikely to convince Google of anything. Give a new site a bit of time, make every page earn its place, and don't panic if Google takes a few weeks to catch up.
What a local business can do in the meantime
None of this means sitting on your hands. There are plenty of useful things you can do over the next fortnight that have nothing to do with chasing rankings.
Make sure your Google Business Profile is up to date, including your Christmas opening hours. For many local businesses, that matters more than where the website ranks. Check that your website's key pages, such as your services, prices and contact details, are accurate and easy to find on a phone. And if there's a question customers ask you all the time, consider answering it properly on your website. That's exactly the sort of helpful content Google says it wants to reward.
Need a hand?
If your traffic does take a noticeable dip once the update has settled, or you'd just like someone to look at your Search Console figures with you and tell you whether it's anything to worry about, I'm happy to help. Have a look at my SEO services, or just get in touch.
