What to Do Now That the Google May 2026 Core Update is Complete

Two weeks have passed since we first updated you about the Google May 2026 core update that began rolling out on 21st May. It was expected to take around 14 days to complete, but it actually finished on 2nd June, lasting a total of 12 days, despite it feeling larger than the last one we experienced. If you missed our blog on this, here are the most important things to know about the Google update in short form:

• Name: Google May 2026 Broad Core Update
• Launched: 21^st May, 2026 11.40 AM ET
• Completed: 2nd June, 2026 (12 day roll out)
• Update Type: Broad Core Algorithm Update.
• Specific Target: All types of content.
• Penalties: No risk of penalties due to it being a core update.
• Global: This is a global update impacting all industries, regions, and languages.
• Impact: The regular core update that looks at core systems, which impact Google Discover and other features.
• Who May See Impacts? Any website, publisher, ecommerce site, or blog relying on organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. may see traffic changes, either positively or negatively, depending on the quality of its content.

As recommended in our previous blog post, hopefully, many of you have halted making any changes, waiting for the completion. Now that the update has finished rolling out, you may wonder whether you are good to go. While Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm, they may not communicate those updates in the future. They regularly do this, so we feel confident that even if they do conduct unconfirmed updates, it will have little to no impact, leaving you safe to move forward on our recommended action plan.

The Immediate Effects

The first weekend that followed the update, there was high volatility, and this continued the weekend after, with the biggest spike occurring on the last day of the update. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, volatility refers to how much Google’s search results are changing. When we discuss “high volatility,” this means rankings are fluctuating a lot, with low volatility meaning the opposite. While websites can naturally move up and down ordinarily, it is in times like these that websites move more frequently, for the simple reason that Google is testing out its new update.

Assess Your Rankings

The update isn’t a penalty, but it will reward and promote great web pages, so following the update, now is the time to see what impact the update has had on your rankings. If you’ve moved up, your content must be satisfying Google, but if you’ve remained where you are or have dropped, now is the time to make some changes. For those who have ranked higher, it will still be worth knowing what you must do to retain this position.

Getting Your Content E-E-A-T Ready

Google is very interested in showing the best content for its users, which is why the update has come about. For web admins, bloggers, and content creators, this means assessing what techniques you are using and how you can do better.

For a number of years now, Google has been focused on encouraging helpful, reliable, people-first content. The problem is that content is incredibly easy to create with the help of AI, and businesses have naturally turned to it as a cost-effective method of churning it out. Although it can be incredibly useful to businesses, it comes at a hidden cost: their rankings.

AI lacks the experience that real people have, so when it creates an article, it will never be able to lean into the concept of first-hand experience that Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) standards look out for. It is the web admins and businesses that are following (and meeting) these E-E-A-T expectations that have an edge over the competition. We expect that Google is only going to continue tapering out “low quality, thin content” and get better at doing so, meaning that E-E-A-T needs to be at the forefront of people’s minds when they create any content. Discover more about why Google E-E-A-T is more important than ever, particularly in the age of LLMs, on our blog.

For businesses that are ready to meet the expected requirements of the new update, we recommend you do the following:

• Evaluate Your Content

Start by looking back over your catalogue of content on your website, from your web pages to your blogs, to see if it is helpful and reliable. It can be useful to get more than one perspective on this, particularly those who aren’t biased about your business or its website. External content marketing and SEO teams can provide you with the most honest review. If you don’t know where to start with this, we recommend the pages that have seen a drop since the update. As Google states on its own website, if the content doesn’t provide original, insightful information, only drawing on other sources and not including research, the content quality isn’t quite meeting the mark. If the content is littered with spelling mistakes, looks sloppy, has stylistic issues, and the headings/subheadings aren’t descriptive or helpful to the reader immediately, again, it will struggle to compete.

The best way to assess your content is to ask “Who, How, and Why”.

• Is it clear who wrote your content?
• How was the content created?
• Why was the content written?
• Rewrite/Optimise Old Content

If you or a third party has decided that improvements need to be made to your content, you will need to form a plan to see it done. SEO planning experts will be able to distinguish which content can be better optimised, with tweaks, and which content needs a full rewrite. For example, if you have a blog that was AI-generated, barely 300 words, not copyedited, doesn’t explore the topic in depth, or demonstrate expertise, we would recommend rewriting this. Our Content Team is on hand to help you do this, not only to a high standard but also quickly, allowing you to jump ahead of your competitors.

If you would rather complete this in-house, ensure it is experts and enthusiasts who know your topic extremely well who are the ones with their fingertips on the keyboards. Providing background about each author who writes for you enables your readership to feel immediate trust in your brand, so we recommend adding bios for each of your content writers or providing linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to their social profiles if you have used external experts.

Spending some time collecting original research and statistics also enables you to not only boost the content quality, but it also results in readers viewing you as a well-trusted and authoritative source.

Although you are writing to meet Google’s expectations, you must not forget the steadfast rule here: people-first content. Writing people-first content means writing genuinely useful pieces that demonstrate first-hand experience and knowledge that not everyone will have had, apart from those who have used the product/service, etc.

You should never write search engine-first content. If your content’s goal is to draw traffic and perform well in the search engine results, such as jumping on trends, summarising other people’s content, and using AI to put out content in bulk, you will ironically never reach your goal. Google doesn’t expect a certain word count or want lots of content. They want quality content that is genuinely useful to their users.

• Apply This to All Content Moving Forward

It is no good making all these changes to your existing content and slipping back into old habits for all future content. If you wish to retain good ranking positions and win more traffic over your competitors, you need to apply E-E-A-T standards to every single piece. We offer both SEO and content writing services, meaning we can be there to support you whether you want to optimise old blog posts or create new, fresh pieces with E-E-A-T in mind.