Google algorithm updates explained: ranking systems, every major update to 2026 and what to do after a drop
Google does not publish a count of its ranking factors. Its own description is that automated ranking systems look at many factors and signals about hundreds of billions of pages, and the “200 ranking factors” figure that circulates is an industry estimate, not a Google number. What Google does publish is a guide to its named ranking systems and a dated list of confirmed ranking updates. This page keeps both in one place: the systems, how often they change, every major named update to 2026, how to prepare, and what to do after a drop.
How many ranking factors does Google use?
Google has never published a number, so any figure you read is an estimate. The reliable public sources are Google’s guide to ranking systems, its “how Search works” pages and its spam policies. Everything beyond those is inference from testing, patents and correlation studies. The useful question is not how many factors exist but which systems Google says it runs, because those are the ones you can build for.
What Google publishes about its ranking systems
Google’s ranking systems guide names the systems in use and the ones it has retired. A system is a permanent part of how results are produced. An update is a dated change to one or more of those systems. The current list, in Google’s own terms:
| System | What Google says it does |
|---|---|
| BERT | Understands how combinations of words express different meanings and intent |
| Crisis information systems | Surfaces helpful information during personal crises and natural disasters |
| Deduplication systems | Avoids showing unhelpful duplicate results |
| Exact match domain system | Stops a domain that matches a query getting too much credit for that alone |
| Freshness systems | Shows fresher content for queries where it would be expected |
| Link analysis systems and PageRank | Understands how pages link to each other to determine relevance |
| Local news systems | Identifies and surfaces local news sources |
| MUM | An AI system for understanding and generating language, used for specific tasks |
| Neural matching | Understands the concepts behind queries and pages |
| Original content systems | Ranks original reporting ahead of pages that only cite it |
| Removal-based demotion systems | Uses volumes of removal requests as a signal |
| Passage ranking system | Assesses individual sections of a page for relevance |
| RankBrain | Helps relate words to concepts |
| Reliable information systems | Shows authoritative pages and demotes low-quality content |
| Reviews system | Rewards in-depth, insightful reviews |
| Site diversity system | Stops one site taking most of the top results |
Retired systems on the same page: Hummingbird, Panda, Penguin and the helpful content system. Retired does not mean the idea is gone. Google notes that the work these systems did now sits inside its core ranking systems, which is why “Panda” and “Penguin” still describe real problems even though neither runs separately.
For a Perth business the systems that decide most days are link analysis, reliable information, reviews, passage ranking, freshness and site diversity, plus local ranking, which Google documents separately and which we cover below.
Why do backlinks matter so much for Google rankings?
Backlinks matter because link analysis is a named, current ranking system: Google’s guide says its link analysis systems and PageRank understand how pages link to each other to work out which pages are relevant and helpful. A link is a third party vouching for a page, and it cannot be manufactured from your own site.
What has changed since 2012 is which links count. Google’s spam updates, including a named link spam update in December 2022, target links that were bought, exchanged or generated to manipulate ranking. So the links that carry weight in 2025 and 2026 are the ones you would want anyway: relevant sites, real editorial context, and no pattern that looks like a scheme. We answer the “are backlinks still important” question in full in our backlinks guide, and our link building service sets out where the links come from.
How often does Google update its algorithm?
Google does not publish a count of the changes it makes in a year. It says it regularly improves its ranking systems through testing and evaluation, and its core updates page says core updates happen several times a year. Named, confirmed updates are listed with start dates on the ranking updates list of the Search Status Dashboard, and that list is the only official count that exists.
Reading that list gives you the honest answer to “how many algorithm updates per year”. For 2025 it shows three core updates (March, June and December) and one spam update (August). For 2026, to 17/09/2026, it shows two core updates (March and May), three spam updates (March, June and August) and one Discover update (February). Smaller changes happen constantly and Google does not publish how many.
The major Google updates to 2026
The table lists the named updates that changed how sites are ranked, from Panda to the most recent entries on Google’s list. Dates from November 2021 onwards are the start dates Google publishes.
| Update | When | What it targeted | What it means now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panda | February 2011 | Thin, duplicated and low-value content | Retired as a separate system, now part of core ranking |
| Penguin | April 2012 | Manipulative links and link schemes | Retired as a separate system, link spam handled by spam updates and core systems |
| Hummingbird | 2013 | The meaning of a query rather than the words in it | Retired, succeeded by RankBrain, neural matching and BERT |
| Pigeon | July 2014 | Local results tied more closely to web ranking signals | Local ranking is now relevance, distance and prominence |
| Mobile-friendly update | 2015 | Rewarded mobile-friendly pages on mobile searches | Followed by mobile-first indexing: the mobile version of a page is what Google indexes |
| RankBrain | 2015 | Machine learning to relate words to concepts | Still a named system |
| BERT | 2019 | Understanding word combinations and intent | Still a named system |
| Page experience update | 2021 on mobile, February 2022 on desktop | Core Web Vitals, HTTPS, mobile usability, intrusive interstitials | Page experience signals sit inside core ranking |
| Product reviews updates | December 2021 to February 2023 | Rewarded first-hand, in-depth reviews | Became the reviews system, with the last named reviews update in November 2023 |
| Helpful content updates | August 2022, December 2022, September 2023 | Content made for search engines rather than people | System retired, its signals folded into core updates from March 2024 |
| March 2024 core and spam updates | 5 March 2024 | Unhelpful content, with new spam policies for scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse and site reputation abuse | The point where “helpful content” became a core ranking matter rather than a separate system |
| Core updates 2024 to 2026 | 2024: August, November, December. 2025: March, June, December. 2026: March, May | Broad reassessment of content quality and usefulness | Several a year, no fixed schedule |
| Spam updates 2024 to 2026 | 2024: June, December. 2025: August. 2026: March, June, August | Sites breaching Google’s spam policies | Automated and ongoing between the named updates |
| Discover update | February 2026 | What Google Discover shows | Check Discover traffic separately in Search Console |
What is the latest Google algorithm update?
As at 17/09/2026, the latest confirmed update on Google’s list is the August 2026 spam update, which began on 18/08/2026. The most recent core update is the May 2026 core update, which began on 21/05/2026. Check the dashboard for anything newer before you attribute a traffic change to an update. A change on a date with no entry is probably something on your own site.
What CMOs need to know about the page experience update
Page experience is a set of signals, not a single switch, and it rewards pages that are fast, stable, secure and usable on a phone. The measurable part is Core Web Vitals: how quickly the main content loads, how quickly the page responds to input, and whether the layout shifts while loading. HTTPS, mobile usability and no intrusive interstitials round it out.
Three things matter for anyone who owns a marketing budget. Page experience is one input among many, so a fast site with weak content does not outrank strong content on a slower site. Where two pages are otherwise close, the better experience wins, and in a local market like Perth pages are often close. And the numbers are already in Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, so the state of your site is not a matter of opinion. Fixing it is technical SEO work: templates, images, scripts and hosting.
How Google ranks local businesses
Google’s local ranking help page says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches the search, distance is how far the business is from the searcher, and prominence is how well known the business is, drawing on information across the web such as links, articles and directories, together with review count and rating. Google adds that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to appear.
Local ranking changes are rarely named on the updates list, so local drops usually trace back to a profile edit, a competitor’s new reviews or a suspension rather than an algorithm. Our local SEO service covers the profile, the citations, the reviews and the location pages that feed the three factors.
How to prepare for a Google algorithm update
You prepare for an algorithm update by having nothing on the site that an update would target, and a baseline that tells you what changed if it does. Do this once, then keep it current:
- Record the baseline. Export the Search Console Performance report monthly (queries and pages) and keep the files. Annotate the start date of each update from Google’s list in your analytics.
- Self-assess the content. Google publishes a set of questions for creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. Read your top 20 pages against them honestly. The questions are about originality, depth, first-hand expertise and whether the page exists for the reader or for the ranking.
- Merge or remove thin pages. Pages that exist only to hold a keyword, near-duplicates and old posts with nothing to say should be consolidated with redirects or removed.
- Check scaled content. Content produced in volume by tools or freelancers with no review, or copied from suppliers, is what the scaled content abuse policy describes. Rewrite it or take it down.
- Audit the links. List paid, sponsored and exchanged links and make sure they carry the right rel attributes. Stop any link building that you could not explain to Google in one sentence.
- Fix the technical base. Crawl errors, Core Web Vitals failures and mobile usability issues are all visible in Search Console and fixable before an update rather than after one.
- Keep the profile and reviews real. First-hand reviews on your Google Business Profile, answered, none incentivised or bought.
- Do not depend on one query. A site whose traffic comes from a single ranking is one update from a crisis.
How agencies help businesses prepare for algorithm updates
A good agency does the work above on a schedule, annotates every update on your reporting, reads your Search Console data the week an update lands, and tells you when nothing needs doing. That last part is where agencies differ. An update is a sales opportunity for any agency that wants to sell a “recovery”, and a business that panics after a small drop often does more damage than the update did.
What to do if your rankings drop after an update
Wait, then measure, then decide. Google’s core updates page says to wait at least a week after an update finishes rolling out, then compare Search Console data before and after. For a small drop, it advises against drastic changes: pages that move down are not necessarily worse, other pages have moved up. For a large drop, it points to the same self-assessment questions above. It also says recovery can take months, and some sites will not see the full effect of improvements until the next core update.
Before you attribute anything to an update, rule out the other causes:
- A manual action. Check the Manual actions report in Search Console. A manual action is a person at Google flagging a policy breach, and it comes with a message and a reconsideration process. An algorithm update does not.
- A technical fault. Compare the drop date with your deployment log. Redirect changes, a robots.txt edit, a noindex tag or a broken template on the same day is a fault, not an update.
- A results page change. If impressions held and clicks fell, the query may now show an AI Overview or a different set of features. Your ranking did not move, the page did.
- Seasonality. Compare against the same weeks last year, not last month.
If the timing matches an update and none of the above applies, list the pages that lost the most clicks, read them against the self-assessment questions, and fix the ones that fail. Our guide on what to do when you have lost your Google rankings walks through the diagnosis.
How do I succeed when the Google algorithm keeps changing?
Build for the direction the updates share rather than for any one update. Every named update since 2011 has pushed the same way: original content from people who know the subject, links earned rather than manufactured, a site that works on a phone, and nothing designed to fool a system. A site built like that is rarely on the wrong side of an update.
When to hand this to an agency
Hand this to an agency when a drop has held for more than a month and you cannot tell which of the causes above applies, when the self-assessment finds more pages to fix than your team can rewrite, or when you have no baseline and the next update is coming regardless. The work is a content and link audit, a technical audit, a rewrite plan and the monitoring to know whether it worked. That is a defined project and it should be quoted as one.
PWD does that work in-house in Perth, with monthly reporting annotated against Google’s update list. There is no 12 or 24 month lock-in.
Book a strategy session
If your traffic moved after an update and you want to know why before you change anything, book a strategy session. We will read your Search Console data against the update dates, tell you whether it was the update, and set out what to fix in order.
Book a strategy session or call 08 6146 0195.
