The August 2023 core update ran from 22 August to 7 September 2023, taking 16 days. Its importance is almost entirely about what came next: it completed on 7 September, and the September 2023 helpful content update began on 14 September. One week apart. August 2023 is therefore the last clean baseline available before the most destructive period in recent search history.
Why this date is the baseline that matters
If you are diagnosing a site that has been down since late 2023, the comparison period you need is before 22 August 2023. Everything after that is contaminated by a sequence of overlapping events: this core update, the September helpful content update, then October core and spam updates, then November core and reviews updates.
Six confirmed rollouts inside eleven weeks. Comparing October against September measures one disruption against another and tells you very little.
The sequence in full
| Update | Dates | Measurement (gap before) |
|---|---|---|
| August 2023 core update | 22 Aug to 7 Sep 2023 | — |
| September 2023 helpful content update | 14 to 28 Sep 2023 | 7 days |
| October 2023 spam update | 4 to 20 Oct 2023 | 6 days |
| October 2023 core update | 5 to 19 Oct 2023 | Overlapping |
| November 2023 core update | 2 to 28 Nov 2023 | 14 days |
| November 2023 reviews update | 8 Nov to 7 Dec 2023 | Overlapping |
What the August update itself did
A standard broad core update with no accompanying policy change and no specific target announced. Movement was reported across most verticals at the level typical for a core update, and by the standards of what followed it was unremarkable.
Some sites did lose here and then lose again in September, which produces a compounding decline that reads as one long slide in a traffic graph. Distinguishing the two steps matters, because the causes and the fixes are different: one is general quality, the other is site-level composition.
How to use this page
Set your comparison period to end on 21 August 2023 and run the drop analyzer against it. If your Search Console history no longer reaches back that far, which is common since it retains 16 months, the honest answer is that the original baseline is gone and recovery has to be measured against a more recent and lower one.
Down since 2023 with no clean baseline left?
That is common and it changes how recovery gets measured, not whether it is possible. Send your Search Console access and I will work out what can still be established.
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Traffic dropped around Aug 22, 2023?
Get a free preliminary diagnosis. I confirm whether this core update is the cause before you spend on fixes.