So, we’re down with another core update — the second one this year. June Core Update 2025 caused significant spikes and drops in volatility before and after its rollout. It wasn’t just the usual target-low-quality-content and prefer-authoritative-pages type update, but extended beyond the traditional fluctuations to integrate tweaks to AI Overviews as well.
And as always, content quality and user experience remained at the core of the update. Google stated:
“This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”
With that, it wouldn’t be wrong to claim that many website owners had a hard time forecasting their business’s future as the update rolled around. In this blog, we analyze its impact to find answers to the following questions.
- What were the major and minor implications of the June Core Update?
- Which sites faced recoveries and why?
- Which factors were responsible for the decline and improvements in traffic?
Volatility Analysis
From 30th June to 17th July, the second update of the year lasted 18 days, which is less than the 3 weeks Google promised. The rollout ended earlier than expected, but the heated volatility remained for days.
To put it simply, the overall volatility was pretty high throughout the duration, with only a few neutral and below-average peaks.
Going Full-Circle: The Impact Of June Core Update
Breaking down this update was like navigating our way through the high tide season in a sea of search rankings. The rollout period was relatively longer, and the impact rippled through various channels, including search and AI features. To make it more digestible, here’s what you need to know.
Affected SERP Features
When it comes to reflecting on the general impact, it is established that Google Core Updates impact all the search surfaces, including news, images, videos, web, discover, top stories, featured snippets, and other unmentioned search features.
And with the arrival of infamous AI Overviews and the recent AI Mode, the impact further expands. As stated in this Google document,
“Like AI Overviews, AI Mode is rooted in our core Search ranking and safety systems and anti-spam protections.”
Our prediction: That said, there’s a possibility that with every next core update rollout, AI Mode rankings and traffic can be affected, and it’s important to keep a close eye on that, too.
Industry-Specific Outcomes
We studied the developments closely across a range of platforms throughout the rollout period. Among the biggest winners were YouTube and Wikipedia, both of which experienced a major visibility hike during the rollout period, while e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, Target, and Lowe’s all encountered significant declines. For a detailed analysis of the biggest industry winners and losers, check out Lily Ray’s analysis of the June Core Update.
In general, a range of industries were affected, and significant movement was experienced by multiple sites. Glenn Gabe also mentioned it in one of their tweets:
The impact seemed to vary across the board. Some saw noticeable loss of rankings and clicks, while others had a field day with unexpected spikes in traffic and clicks. Here’s a clear overview of how different industries were impacted.
- Some sites in the food niche tanked gravely.
- The tech and gaming niche saw tremendous growth during this update.
- Some SEOs shared that their clients’ sites had a great spike in this core update season.
HCU Recoveries
The biggest highlight of the June core update was the HCU sites (select few) making a comeback. According to our prediction, some part of the component accelerated the Helpful Content Update classifier — which had previously marked some sites as unhelpful — now marked them as helpful again.
On Reddit, we saw some people mentioning their hit sites experiencing movement again, maybe the first one since the pivotal year of 2023. Others took to Twitter to mention similar developments.
In this article by Glenn Gabe, it was noted that some sites even surged back after being completely flatlined and having no visibility at all for the previous years.
And it’s almost ironic to see several sites (that did no changes at all) stepping back up the search ladder. Many among them had stopped posting new content, while others had resorted to publishing less frequently. Essentially, the sites didn’t change, but the way Google viewed them did. Here are a few statements from different social and forum platforms to back up the HCU recovery argument.
“Important point about some recoveries of HCU sites cuz of June 2025 Core Update – most that I’m aware of and are seeing some improvements did NOT do any sort of changes to their sites and just continues to publish at lesser frequency since getting hit in Sep 2023. If those are recovering it’s Google’s algorithm which improved and now can identify better content in a better way -> therefore rewarding it. Rather than it having to do anything with any SEO strategy or tactic which those sites implemented.” – Gagan Gothra on Twitter.
“Over last 3 days, my main site heavily hit by HCU is making a strong recovery. Interestingly, we haven’t made any changes to it. We did make changes to it after HCU and then reverted it back to how it was pre HCU as it shouldn’t have been penalised in the first place. Only difference is that previously we were running a lot of AdSense on the site and now we’re not. I don’t think that’s what’s helped but hope the trend continues and survives throughout the core update rollout. Let’s see.” – lewis1 on WebmasterWorld.
“This is the first time in a long time I actually can find some of my blog posts on the first page, although none have regained their original position but I’ll take being ranked at this point” –
Samantha Oppenheimer on Twitter.
Factors Responsible for Growth
This update season rewarded many smaller sites, which is good because some of them were waiting for their breakthrough.
To look more into it, we did some research and analyzed sites that experienced growth during the rollout. We tracked their traffic, visibility, and top keywords following the update rollout and assessed what factors could’ve contributed to their notable success. For reference, here’s a list of sites next to their respective niches.
Health and Wellness — Pazona MD, Washington Health and Drug
Gaming — OpenCritic
Food and Beverage — Junction 35 Horizontal
These sites exhibited a few distinguishing factors that we perceive to be the reason for their hike. These include:
- A well-organized structure and tabs that allow users to navigate through the site easily, as well as seamlessly jump to the sections they want to check out.
- The content is insightful, answers queries, and has headings that mirror the search intent.
- The information goes beyond the mere instructional guide and addresses users’ needs on a deeper level.
- Some sites have extensive FAQs at the end of their product and service pages. They provide quick and direct answers to the common issues most users or potential buyers face.
- They have genuine reviews on their Google Business Profiles.
Post Update Reversals & Volatility
After the update ended on 17th July, the volatility didn’t seem to calm down. However, the post-core update volatility isn’t an eyebrow-raising matter, as it neutralizes after a few days.
But this time, it persisted for far more days than usual, and stretched throughout July and August. And this super hot behavior led to unstable rankings and made many sites go downhill, even those who experienced a hike during the initial update rollout.
It could be the case that Google might have pushed another smaller update to overhaul another component of its big binary system. And maybe because of this, SERP rankings were going haywire. The chatter echoed across various social channels and forums, here’s some from Webmaster World.
“Chicken has left the house again! Big drop today. Zero user engagement. As I see in the logs it started yesterday at sharp 8pm.”
“…we lost 50% over night. Complete rubbish traffic.” Martin Ice Web from
“Whatever was happening earlier this week is definitely over and traffic has reverted. My home page traffic was -25 to -50% until Friday, and since yesterday back to normal. Today traffic is unusually high…”
“Our core update gains are reversing in the last 24hrs. Down around 50%.”
That was all we garnered about the second update of the year. If you were hit by this update, consider performing a web, content, and search analysis to identify any areas to improve and regain your rankings.
The Comparative Analysis: March vs June Core Update 2025
June Core Update was indeed a big one. And if you compare it with the previous March Core Update, there are some interesting insights to unpack.
What we mean by it is that if you study their volatility patterns and peak volatility comparisons across different verticals, you’ll see that the March Core Update seems clearly to be the bigger update.
But if you look at the one specific data metric, which is the appearance of new ranking URLs on page 1 that weren’t even ranking in the top 20 before the update, you’ll find the June Core Update is the winner here.
To put it into context, here’s a development that is very important to gauge the real impact of the update. Recently, Mordy Oberstein employed Semrush data to run a comprehensive data analysis. The findings indicated a significant shift in ranking positions across the board. It was noted that after the June 2025 core update, over 16% of URLs ranking in the top 20 were relocated to the top 10 positions. This was a higher proportion compared to the March core update.
With that, we’ll wrap up our June Core Update analysis. Hope this one didn’t hit your website too hard. For more search news and updates, stay tuned to the LBHQ channel.
