Google May 2026 Core Update Landed Over The Weekend

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Barry Schwartz / Executive Editor

As you know, Google announced the May 2026 core update on Thursday afternoon and it didn't take long for the update to be felt by the SEO community. Many, not all, but many, started to feel the impact of this core update over the weekend.

The update is far from done, but we saw signs that the early impact touched down this weekend. Maybe late Friday, into Saturday and Sunday. It might be calming a bit today, Monday but I am sure it will heat up again as it continues to roll out over the next couple of weeks.

As a reminder, Google released the May 2026 core update on Thursday at around 11:43 am ET and said, "The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete."

So what are we seeing?

SEO Chatter on May 2026 Core Update

There is a lot of chatter across social, WebmasterWorld and this site - here is some of that chatter:

Core update: that explains the sharp drop yesterday: again 50%.

Another awful core "update". The only upside is that Google SERPs were already fantastically bad before this update, so the impact won't matter much.

I came to see if there was an update...first my visibility surged, now dropped through the floor. I knew something had to be up. This time I did not get any traffic bump or increase in inquiries at the beginning as I normally do.

So far this weekend my global site has been very quiet however I did expect this with both US and UK having an extra day plus in much of Europe there is very warn weather at long last.

And then there is the hotel multi functions business with all departments very busy on the website especially the restaurants and live music pages.

Altogether as expected with only one more UK public holiday here until Xmas!

Up about 30% internationally, and a little less for USA, which I suspect is due to the holiday weekend. Scared to feel any type of way since it can be gone at any moment.

For me, it looks like a 50% drop from last week, but I'm hoping they change their mind midway through, as they've done in the past. Just reiterates my view that they want to enshittify the results to push more towards the AI.

My site is always quiet from June to August, so I'm probably not the best person to say how well things are doing. Mine's not a footie site....

One site in my field is seeing a massive +100% increase in traffic, even though their content is inaccurate, and they have been banned from Reddit for posting inaccurate information. There has been no movement for other competitor sites or mine.

Here in Brazil, the smaller sites that were still on Discover were removed (even those with well-made content). Now, only news portals or sites with thousands of backlinks appear (even those with clickbait content, uninteresting, superficial, and poorly made).

Steady up till now, in the EU that is

Like others said... total collapse. traffic totally gone.

In the past, if you're hit by any Google update, there's a chance you can recover from it. and everyone had faith in google in 'doing the right thing' and trusting their algorithm updates.

Since 2022-2023, if you're hit, you're practically blacklisted. With each update, it will sink you lower and lower. Sure, there will be times you see your traffic going up by 20-30%, but the next update they will take everything back and make it worse... so you end up -50%. if you look at your traffic graph for the couple of years, it just goes down at an exponential curve....

Yes this is my graph as well, it is up and down but overall I am 80% down compared to pre-AIO.

I do. I am almost zeroed... don't know what is happening.

8% up but still does not make up with the fall post March. These constant updates make it difficult for us to stabilize and really see where we are.

Glenn Gabe's found it hit over the weekend as well:

Good Morning Google Land! This is the 5/25 edition of "Core Update Notes". I explained on Saturday that the May 2026 broad core update was "landing" and I've seen more and more impact since then (across verticals and countries).

Some new additions to my list include a number of… pic.twitter.com/zOOVbPMEDy

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 25, 2026

But many are still not seeing much and there are a ton of comments of people saying they saw no movement at all. And that is also normal - not everyone sees big changes with core updates.

But this core update does feel real, heavy and like it got teeth.

Google Tracking Tools

Here is an update on the tools, notice most show a increase in volatility over the weekend:

Semrush:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SimilarWeb:

Zutrix:

Wincher:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

Accuranker:

Mozcast:

Data For SEO:

Algoroo:

Mangools (looks broken):

Here are more details on the Google May 2026 core update.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and X.

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