On June 30, 2025, Google announced the second core update of the year. In the weeks before, rankings in Google had already been swinging widely, and many SEO specialists suspected an update was coming. With the announcement, it became official.
Rolled out from June 30 to July 17
The June 2025 core update began on June 30 and was fully rolled out on July 17, a little over two weeks later. In its announcement, Google had already said the rollout could take up to three weeks. According to Google, it is a regular update, meant to better surface relevant content.
Search Engine Roundtable had already reported big swings in the rankings on June 28, and anyone tracking their positions had seen them moving since early June.
Who dropped and who gained
During and after the rollout, the first effects became visible. Some websites lost traffic from Google, while other sites gained.
How big the effect was differed by industry and by type of website. On SEO forums, the main message was that sites with thin or over-optimized content seemed to be hit harder.
What does this mean for your website?
The update seems to reward mainly pages that actually help the reader. Pages with “thin content” (little original content, often written only around a keyword) and pages stuffed with keywords dropped the hardest. Google once again stresses what it calls “people-first content”: content written first and foremost for people.
Pages shift toward search terms that fit better
What I notice, and so do others in the field: pages are suddenly shown for different searches. They drop on search terms that only half fit the content, and rise on searches that match exactly what is on the page.
So Google seems to read the content of a page in finer detail. MUVERA, a new search technique from Google, may play a part in that. It pays attention to the meaning of the whole page and to what the searcher wants to know, and less to individual keywords.
For my clients, this means that good SEO copy has started to matter more: one topic per page, explained well, in the words the searcher uses themselves.
What to do and not to do after a core update
Don't:
- Rush to change pages while the update is still rolling out
- Draw conclusions from swings over a few days
Do:
- Keep track of your positions and traffic, including in the weeks after the rollout
- Improve your existing content, starting with the pages that dropped
- Show who is behind your content (E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness)
My approach
I follow every core update and look at what it does to my clients' rankings. My full SEO approach is built around pages that stay sound, even after the next update. The first signals from this update point the same way: Google once again rewards sites where a visitor gets something out of it.
Want to know what the update did to your site?
Get in touch for a no-obligation analysis. I put your rankings from before and after the update side by side, so you can see which pages rose and which dropped.
Call: +31 6 282 064 10. Or schedule a call.
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