November 2026 Core Update

The three most recent Google updates were all Spam Updates (June, August, September) and now in November we've got our third Core update of the year. According to Google's brief announcement it's a regular update, and the aim is to "better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites." This is the same wording they've used in the last several core update announcements. I take this to mean they want to surface better content on their own SERPs inside of AI-generated answers. If more "satisfying" content is surfaced, people will have less of a reason to leave the SERP or AI Mode interface. This is also the first core update since Google added the multimodal search report in Search Console, so maybe it will have more of an effect on how images and videos are surfaced in search results and answers. Time will tell!

1. Organic traffic trends, especially non-branded (Google Search Console)

2. Ranking flux & search visibility for high intent keywords (Semrush, Ahrefs, or similar)—look for ranking movements (higher or lower) for website content

3. Keep a close eye on your most valuable SERPs—look out for any changes in the content that is being ranked higher or lower than before the update

4. URL indexation trends (Google Search Console)

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1. Check if the speed or E-E-A-T of your URLs could be a cause of traffic drops.

2. Make sure you haven’t deleted any pieces of content which were previously earning a high volume of organic search traffic.

3. Make sure your content that used to get traffic is still indexed.

4. Determine if significant changes have been made to your website structure or semantic HTML.

5. Prune your content to remove (or improve) unhelpful or non-unique pages. Monitor & track changes made to your website.

6. Track the changing relevance (perceived intent) of keywords related to your content.

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