Google announced the August 2023 core update on 22nd Aug. It marked the update complete on the Search Status Dashboard on 7th Sep 2023, after 16 days and 3 hours.
It was the second core update of 2023 and the first in almost five months. It followed the March 2023 core update, which completed on 28th Mar.
Search Engine Land reported on early SEO industry chatter. It pointed to a fairly impactful update compared with previous core updates.
As with every broad core update, it reassessed content quality in general rather than targeting one thing. Google repeated its standing line.
A negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. And there are no specific actions to take to recover.
If your site moved in the 22nd Aug to 7th Sep window, audit the pages that lost rankings. Check them against the self-assessment questions in Google's core updates help pages.
Invest in overall helpfulness. Meaningful recovery typically shows up at a future core update.
Our recovery guide covers the sequence.
