Post Core Update Recovery

---
name: post-core-update-recovery
description: 'Use when a website experienced a sudden visibility/ranking drop that correlates with a published Google Core Update — symptoms include broad ranking loss across many keywords in a short window (1–6 weeks), Sistrix VI dropping 30 %+ from peak, sales/leads falling despite no technical changes, the owner saying "we used to rank, now we don''t" but pages still load and index normally. Distinguishes Core-Update damage from CWV/technical drops and produces a phased 6–12 month recovery plan focused on Authority and EEAT.'
user-invokable: true
argument-hint: '[domain]'
allowed-tools: [Read, Grep, Glob]
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Max Schottke
  version: '0.5.0'
  category: marketing
---

# Post-Core-Update Recovery

## Overview

A specific recovery framework for domains that **lost visibility after a Google Core Update**. Core insight from real March/April 2026 recovery cases: *Authority items > technical hygiene*. Recovery 6–12 months, not 6–8 weeks.

## When to use

- VI drop correlates timely with a published Core Update (see Google Search Status Dashboard)
- Drop is **broad** (many keywords simultaneously, not pinpoint)
- Pages keep indexing normally, no technical break
- GSC shows no manual action
- Pattern: 1–6 weeks of decline, then bottoming out

**Don't use for:**
- Point keyword losses → usually on-page issue, not core update
- Drop coincides with migration / theme change / robots change → that's technical, not core
- Drop is <20 % from peak → can be normal market noise

## Diagnosis decision tree

```dot
digraph diag {
    "Visibility dropped?" [shape=diamond];
    "Correlates with Core Update date?" [shape=diamond];
    "Brand keywords also dropped?" [shape=diamond];
    "Manual action in GSC?" [shape=diamond];
    "CWV suddenly red?" [shape=diamond];
    "Apply Recovery (this skill)" [shape=box,style=filled,fillcolor=lightblue];
    "Technical problem first" [shape=box,style=filled,fillcolor=lightyellow];
    "Penalty workflow, not here" [shape=box,style=filled,fillcolor=lightcoral];
    "Performance-first workflow" [shape=box,style=filled,fillcolor=lightyellow];
    "Market noise, observe" [shape=box];

    "Visibility dropped?" -> "Correlates with Core Update date?" [label="yes"];
    "Correlates with Core Update date?" -> "Manual action in GSC?" [label="yes"];
    "Manual action in GSC?" -> "Penalty workflow, not here" [label="yes"];
    "Manual action in GSC?" -> "Brand keywords also dropped?" [label="no"];
    "Brand keywords also dropped?" -> "Technical problem first" [label="yes"];
    "Brand keywords also dropped?" -> "CWV suddenly red?" [label="no"];
    "CWV suddenly red?" -> "Performance-first workflow" [label="yes"];
    "CWV suddenly red?" -> "Apply Recovery (this skill)" [label="no"];
    "Correlates with Core Update date?" -> "Market noise, observe" [label="no"];
}
```

If brand keywords are intact and CWV is stable but generic keywords are broadly lost → this is the core signature of a Core Update hit.

## Required diagnostic steps (day 1)

1. **Document the Core Update date** — see https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history. Match Sistrix drop date exactly.
2. **Measure the Sistrix drop diff** — monthly values 12 months before vs 1–3 months after the update.
3. **DataForSEO ranked-keywords diff** — compare top positions pre vs post update. Specific URL clusters affected or distributed uniformly?
4. **GSC click diff** — which URLs lost most traffic? Pattern visible (all blog posts? all product pages? all YMYL topics?)
5. **EEAT audit of lost top URLs** — author visible? Sources cited? Last-updated stamp? Trust layer (About, Imprint, Reviews)?
6. **Self-canonical audit** — check whether competing pages all carry self-referencing canonical tags. CMS platforms with SEO plugins (Shopware/DreiscSeo, WordPress/Yoast, Magento) commonly set `isCanonical=true` on ALL pages by default. When keyword overlap exists between pages, self-canonicals cause invisible cannibalization: Google sees competing versions without a consolidation signal. Identify clusters with 2+ URLs targeting overlapping keywords, verify each page's `<link rel="canonical">`, and flag cases where ALL competing pages point to themselves.
7. **Structural quality baseline** — crawl all indexable pages and classify as healthy/broken/thin/duplicate. If >40 % of pages are broken (rendering failures, empty content divs, soft-404s, Lorem-ipsum), the drop is not pure authority — it is authority multiplied by structural decay. Fixing the structural baseline is then a recovery accelerator, not just hygiene.

## Recovery plan (3 phases × 6–12 months)

### Phase A — Authority foundation (months 1–2)

**What Google especially scrutinizes in Core Updates:**
- **Author authority** — Person behind the content, qualifications visible
- **Topical authority** — Site covers the topic in depth AND breadth, not just isolated pages
- **Trust signals** — About, Imprint, Reviews, Sources, Date stamps
- **Original insight** — Own data, own perspective rather than "I read elsewhere"

**Concrete steps:**
1. Rebuild every author page: photo, bio with qualifications, list of articles, social profiles (LinkedIn/X), `Person` schema
2. Edit each affected top URL: author visible (+schema), `dateModified`, sources with outbound links, update notes
3. Strengthen About/Imprint pages: team intro, company history, location, contact — mandatory trust signals
4. Sitewide: reviews/testimonials visible above the fold (manage on original platforms, NOT mirror sites)

### Phase B — Topical authority hubs (months 2–4)

**Goal:** transform a collection of scattered pages into coherent topic hubs.

1. Identify main topics (3–7 for e-commerce, 5–15 for news/publishers)
2. Per topic: 1 pillar page (1500–3000 words, comprehensive) + 5–15 sub-pages (600–1500 words each, specific)
3. Internal linking: sub-pages link to pillar, pillar links to all subs ("hub-and-spoke")
4. If available: use `claude-seo:seo-cluster` for data-driven topic identification

### Phase C — Off-page authority (months 4–8)

**Backlinks deliberately, not at scale:**
1. Manufacturer/supplier partnerships for links
2. Industry communities (e-commerce: camper forums, boating blogs; news: investigations, exclusive stories)
3. Local press (regional anchor, PR opportunities)
4. Original studies/data — generates organic links better than anything else

**What NOT to do:**
- Link-building services with "100 links for €500" → leads to spam score, recovery even harder
- Reciprocal links at scale
- PBN backlinks
- Forum spam

### Phase D — Technical hygiene (in parallel, lowest priority)

Only after A–C are running:
- PSI optimization (LCP, INP, CLS)
- Schema markup completeness
- Image alt texts, sitemap hygiene

These are **NOT** the recovery lever — Core Updates don't penalize tech, they penalize trust/authority. But technical hygiene supports the other levers.

## Realistic expectations

- **Baseline expectation: visible movement starts after 3–4 months.** Google needs time to re-evaluate authority signals. Full recovery usually takes 9–18 months.
- **Accelerated recovery is possible** when multiple acceleration factors are present simultaneously (see next section). The 3–4 month baseline assumes authority-only work without structural cleanup.
- **Recovery outcome in observed cases is in the 50–80 % range** of pre-drop visibility. Full recovery to 100 % seems to require structural changes (new content lines, new authority sources), not just optimization of what existed before.
- **Pattern: recovery comes in jumps**, often timed with the next Core Update rather than gradually. A single week can deliver +30–50 % VI gain after weeks of flat movement.

## Recovery acceleration factors

Recovery CAN be significantly faster than the 3–4 month baseline when these conditions are present:

1. **Pre-existing authority clusters.** If the site already has pages ranking Pos 1–5 for informational authority queries (blog, guides, "best X" content), these serve as trust anchors. Google does not need to build authority from scratch — it needs to re-recognize existing authority after the scoring change.

2. **Structural quality cleanup executed in parallel.** If >40 % of pages are broken/thin/duplicate (see Structural Quality Baseline in RECOVERY_SYSTEM.md), fixing them removes a compounding penalty. The Core Update hit is authority × structural quality — improving either factor independently lifts the product.

3. **Do-Not-Touch discipline maintained.** Sites that panic-edit recovering URLs reset their recovery timeline. Strict protection of winners lets the positive signal accumulate undisturbed.

4. **AI Citations as leading confirmation.** Rising AI Overview / ChatGPT / Perplexity mentions while classical VI is still flat confirm that the authority work is being recognized. This is a confidence signal to continue, not a reason to change course.

5. **Conversion rate improvement validates traffic quality.** If CR rises alongside or shortly after traffic increases, the recovery is bringing the RIGHT users. This rules out the "vanity recovery" scenario where positions improve on irrelevant queries.

When 3+ of these factors are present, recovery has been observed to proceed materially faster than the baseline. Specific outcomes are case-dependent.

## Owner communication

**Don't say:**
- "It'll be back to normal in 6 weeks"
- "We know the trick to fix this"
- "Sistrix score will double in 4 weeks"

**Do say:**
- "We measure monthly. First positive movement expected in 3–4 months."
- "This is an authority problem, not a technical problem. Fixing it takes time."
- "We're building the substance Google looks for — not the trick."

## Common rationalization traps

| Statement | Reality |
|-----------|---------|
| "Let's buy 200 backlinks" | Raises spam score, makes recovery harder |
| "Let's do a relaunch" | More risk than upside — substance first, then form |
| "Better PSI will bring us back" | PSI is hygiene, not the core update lever |
| "More pages = more traffic" | False — thin content weakens authority further |
| "We did everything right" | In a Core Update Google changes the scoring. Being "right" doesn't help. |

## Related skills

- **claude-seo:seo-audit** — for the technical hygiene layer in Phase D
- **claude-seo:seo-cluster** — for topical-authority-hub identification
- **seo-outreach-report** — when the owner needs a printable status report

## Real data points (anonymized 2026 cases)

- March/April 2026 update: mid-size DE shop lost 50 % VI in 4 weeks
- Diagnosis pattern confirmed: brand keywords stable, generic keywords broadly lost, CWV unchanged
- Recovery plan: 6–12 months, Authority-First. Tech (PSI/Schema) in parallel but not the primary lever.
- Lesson (Sistrix wording on March update): "Authority beats interchangeability"

A second real case (DE news site) showed the same pattern in April/May 2026: −60 % VI in 6 weeks, brand stability intact — news/YMYL variant of the same algo recalibration.