Google announced the September 2022 core update on Twitter. It started the rollout the same day, 12th Sep 2022, around 11:26 am ET.
It said the rollout could take up to two weeks.
It used all of them. Google's updates page recorded "The rollout was complete as of September 26, 2022", exactly 14 days.
It was the second core update of 2022, arriving about four months after the May 2022 core update. It came just three days after the original helpful content update finished rolling out on 9th Sep.
By the tracking tools' measure it landed softly. Ranking swings showed up quickly once the rollout began.
But the consensus among data providers was that it was weaker than past Google core updates.
One complication for anyone doing post-mortems: it overlapped the September 2022 product reviews update in its final week. That update ran 20th to 26th Sep, entirely inside this core update's window.
Both were recorded complete on the same day.
As a broad core update, it reassessed content quality in general. There is nothing specific to fix and no penalty to lift.
If your site moved in the 12th to 26th Sep window, audit the pages that lost visibility. Check them against the self-assessment questions in Google's core updates help pages.
Invest in overall helpfulness. Meaningful recovery typically registers at a future core update.
Our recovery guide covers the sequence.
