The Impact of Google’s March 2025 Core Update

Google regularly and continuously makes updates to its search engine algorithm. Some of these are minor changes and tweaks that have small changes on the search engine results page (SERP). Others are major updates intended to make a significant impact on results. Let’s explore the impact of Google’s March 2025 core update.

What We’ll Cover:

• The purpose and timing of the March update.
• Volatility on the SERP.
• Recovery after ranking loss from an update.

What Was this Core Update About?

Google described this as a typical update aimed at making the SERP more helpful and relevant to searchers. The intent is to surface the best possible content.

In particular, this update focused on elevating websites with:

• Quality content
• Excellent user experience signals
• E-E-A-T
• Aligned search intent

These are all important pillars of search engine optimization that we should always be focused on. When a new core update impacts the SERP in a profound way, it’s essential to review best practices and determine if changes are necessary.

Websites that embodied these elements saw a rise in rankings. Sites and pages that experienced a drop may not have been penalized or punished by Google, but may have simply not been meeting their new standards for search as fully as the new higher ranking pages.

When Was the March 2025 Google Core Update?

The March 2025 core update began rolling out on March 13 and wrapped up on March 27. In total, it took 14 days to complete. This is a pretty typical timeline for a core update, although the March 2024 update was notoriously long, taking 45 days to complete.

This was the first update since the December 2024 core update, which closely followed the November 2024 core update.

Assessing Volatility on the SERP

Volatility on the SERP is the fluctuation in rankings and results for a specific keyword or search query. Over the years, volatility has become the norm rather than the exception—even in between updates.

We typically see more volatility than normal during updates, and the March 2025 core update was no different. In particular, Search Engine Land reported that volatility was incredibly similar to the December 2024 core update.

Recovering from Ranking Loss After an Update

If you experienced a significant loss in rank, impressions, or traffic following a core update, it’s important to take a step back and carefully evaluate your website. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do we provide high-quality content that provides unique, fresh, and relevant content for searchers?
• How are Core Web Vitals and page speed performing?
• Are we embodying E-E-A-T sitewide?
• Are we providing clear and concise answers, or burying what searchers want beneath unnecessary content?

SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Incremental changes over time will have a far more profound impact than massive changes that are made once and then forgotten about. And while there are exceptions, most sites won’t experience a significant recovery until the next core update.

Can AI Help Our Law Firm Site Recover from the March 2025 Core Update?

AI tools make it easy to regurgitate pages and pages of content at scale. However, this content is rarely unique or all that helpful to searchers. And if you’re using AI tools to blindly and drastically scale the content on your website, be aware that Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan warns that Google quality raters typically rate this type of content as low quality.

Real human writers continue to provide a more detailed and personal experience for your target users. That’s why GAVL relies on our in-house writing team instead of AI tools for producing all of our legal content.

Looking Ahead to Future Updates

Assessing the impact of the March 2025 core update should be done with careful consideration to every aspect of your law firm website, from the content on your practice area pages to the design and functionality of your entire site.

It’s also important to keep in mind that this is just the first core update for the year. With more changes to Google’s search algorithm on the horizon, it’s important to keep your focus on regular and incremental changes that improve the quality of your website and its ability to match users’ search intent.