Resources · Algorithm Updates

Every update.
Zero surprises.

Track every major Google algorithm update alongside the VDS architectural response. Built for SEOs, founders, and marketers who need to understand what changed, what it means, and what to do about it.

Google core updates — VDS impact analysis

March 2025 Core Update

Content quality and authority signals tightened further

High impact

Continued enforcement of Helpful Content signals. Sites with thin topical coverage and low E-E-A-T continued to lose ground. Sites with genuine topic authority and well-structured content clusters maintained or gained rankings.

VDS response: Topical authority clusters built at the architecture stage are update-resistant by design. No client sites using VDS architecture lost rankings.
August 2024 Core Update

Marketplace and aggregator pages hit hardest

Critical

Automotive, travel, and local service aggregators saw significant ranking drops. Template-heavy programmatic pages without genuine entity depth were heavily penalised. AI Overviews simultaneously absorbed zero-click queries across affected categories.

VDS response: LLM-ready entity-driven programmatic templates with genuine location depth survived. VDS automotive marketplace client: 115K → 250K traffic post-recovery. 4x revenue in 3 months.
March 2024 HCU Enforcement

Mass programmatic page deindexing

High impact

Millions of thin programmatic pages deindexed globally. Competitors with template-spam location pages lost 40–70% of their programmatic inventory overnight. Pages that survived had genuine intent depth, entity-relevance scoring, and unique value per URL.

VDS response: All 52+ VDS-built location pages survived 100%. Zero deindexing. Architecture was built on genuine intent depth from day one — not template multiplication.
September 2022 Core Update

YMYL sector hardest hit — the VDS origin update

Severe

Legal, financial, medical, and compliance sectors decimated. Platforms with black-hat legacy tactics and thin content saw 80–95% traffic drops. Recovery took 18+ months for most affected sites.

VDS response: This update is why VDS exists. E-E-A-T rebuild + intent architecture reversed a 94.4% collapse in 4 months. 10x leads. Spam score to zero. The playbook became the foundation of the VDS framework.

Also see: AEO / GEO Updates

Tracking changes to AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity updates, and the evolving GEO landscape separately — because the algorithm and the AI surfaces are moving on different timelines.

View AEO / GEO Updates →