Most Websites Saw No Unusual Search Drop After Google’s March 2025 Core Update
Diib compared Google search traffic on 33,837 websites before and after Google's March 2025 core update. 2.4% had a sharp search-only drop, within the 2.0–3.2% seen in most update-free periods.
For most small businesses, Google's March 2025 core update looked like an ordinary two weeks of search traffic. The sites that did drop sharply mostly stayed down six weeks later, but drops in weeks with no update stuck just as often, so a lasting loss is a sign to look at the site, not only at Google.
Sharp search traffic losses were no more common than usual after Google’s March 2025 core update: 2.4% of websites in Diib’s data had a sharp drop in Google search visits in the two weeks after it began, within the 2.0–3.2% seen in most two-week stretches with no update.
What Diib measured
Google’s March 2025 core update rolled out from March 13 to March 27, 2025. We compared each website’s visits from unpaid Google search in the 14 days before (Feb. 27–March 12) with the 14 days from March 13 (March 13–26). We included 33,837 sites with complete daily data and at least 150 search visits beforehand. A site counted as a drop if its search visits fell 30% or more while its direct visits (people typing the address or using a bookmark) held within 30% of normal, which filters out tracking problems and outages. As a baseline, we ran the same test on 11 update-free periods between January and June 2025.
| Period (start date) | Sites | Search visits down 30%+, direct steady |
|---|---|---|
| March 2025 core update (Mar. 13) | 33,837 | 2.4% |
| No update, January and April–June (8 periods) | 33,906–35,616 | 2.0%–3.2% |
| No update, February (3 periods) | 34,395–35,414 | 4.5%–5.5% |
February’s update-free periods ran higher for reasons this data can’t explain. March’s rate was lower than those weeks, not higher.
Did the March 2025 core update hit any industry harder?
Not in this data. The typical website kept 101% of its usual search visits, against 92–107% in the update-free periods. No industry with at least 800 sites ran more than about a point above its normal rate. Finance sites were highest at 3.7% (2.6% normally), and home and garden sites were among the lowest at 1.3% (2.3% normally).
Six weeks later
The sites that did drop mostly stayed down. Of the 809 with complete data, 73% were still down by a quarter or more in days 29–42 after the start (April 10–23), and 15% were back within 10% of normal. Drops in update-free periods stuck about as often (61–76% still down), the same pattern as in Diib’s look at recovery after 2026 Google updates.
What this data can’t tell you
Core updates can move rankings for many pages by smaller amounts that a 30% test won’t catch, and timing alone doesn’t prove the update caused any single drop. The March 2026 core update looked much the same. See Google updates in 2026, or the history of Google algorithm updates for earlier years.
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