Google’s Core Update Killed My Site

I'm a big fan of The Niche Pursuit Podcast. I've been listening for a while and especially like it when they get to talking about the "Niche Websites" at the end. This is the section where they start to talk about websites that seem to do well despite their niche or the fact that they look like they've not been updated since before millennium.

Within this section, there's a trend for "Calculator Sites". These are sites that are usually made to solve pretty specific problems.

These calculators were weird and wonderful. They'd be things like "Cheese Calculator", or "Double Glazing Calculator". Sites that seemingly would have no value, but when looking at their traffic in SemRush or AHRefs would show huge monthly visitors.

The theory behind the success of these sites is that Google likes tools and things that solve real users problems. They hate content sites, but love tools.

Having had Google completely ignore some of my content sites, this go my brain ticking. I thought, why don't I create my own Calculator site and use it as a case study.

So I did...

The Research Phase

To start with, I thought I'd look in to some "general purpose" calculator sites to get a rough idea of traffic.

I was going to need a bigger boat....

This may have been an anomaly, so I checked a few others:

Whilst I was on hold to my hosting company telling them that I'd need my own dedicated server farm for all of the traffic I was going to get, I did a bit more digging.

Now clearly these sites had been around for a long time. They'd build an extremely solid backlink profile and were so far out of the Google Sandbox that they'd forgotten what sand in their toes felt like.

I'm not stupid enough to think that I was going to get to the level of these sites, but I didn't need to. Even with 1% of the traffic that they get, I can make a profitable site.

I did some initial keyword research and found myself some pretty tasty looking low KD, high traffic keywords to validate that this was worth it.

The Build

Step One: The Domain

I didn't want to have to wait around in the Google Sandbox, so over to GoDaddy domain sales I went.

I didn't want to sink a lot of money in to a domain name, and I had the cost of some link building to come, so the budget was low.

I wanted a domain that was over 18 months old and had at least a couple of solid backlinks. I narrowed down the list, ran them through TheWayBackMachine and off I went and purchased a domain.

Step Two: Keyword Research

I'd validated that this idea was viable already, but needed to get a list of keywords and topical clusters as a place to start.

I headed over to AHRefs and found a list of 20 keywords that contained "Calculator", validated that there was at least one domain in the top 10 that had a DR of lower than 20, and put them in to a list.

Step Three: The Build

Now, I run an SEO automation and Software SaaS (the very one you are reading this Blog on, SmoothSEO!), I wasn't going to manually create all of these pages.

I built a set of tooling that would take in a set of data (Keyword, URL and a few other things) and hooked it up to my WordPress site. I generated all of the pages, their outlines, categories etc. and sent them all over to my site via the WordPress API.

I didn't want this site to be an AI generated site (I've got another case study site I'm running similar to this, but AI generated), so these automation was purely as a time saver, not to do real PSEO/AI "One Shot" site.

I ran through each of those initial pages, generated a calculator with the help of AI (validating the results against existing industry calculators), create an accompanying SEO optimised web page using RankReady and submitted it all to GSC.

Step Four: Building the trust!

Google needs to trust that my new site is a legit site and not something put together for nefarious reasons.

I did the usual rounds: Added citations, built some backlinks, add a YouTube channel for it and posted some links from Reddit.

These signals should be enough to get Google to trust me.

The rise before the fall

Things started off well.

Google will often give your pages some initial positions against certain keywords and then try them out for a while.

A large portion of the positions my site held were in the 80 - 90 places, so I was never going to get high CTR.

As you can see, things were steadily rising. The stats here are nothing to write home about, but I was above the 400 impressions a day and was ranking for around 1000 keywords.

Dropping off a cliff

See if you can spot what upset me one early morning in late March?

Overnight, my site went from around 400 impressions per day (which was trending in the positive direction) and around 1000 keywords, to zero impressions and ranking for about 4 keywords (2 of them appear knowhere in my site).

What Happened to my site?

To put it briefly, the Google Core Update March 2025 finished rolling out.

I thought I'd got through the update unscathed as it had been running for two weeks and I'd seen no issues at all. Turns out, they were just waiting until the very last minute to make me sad.

Let's use Googles very own AI overviews to tell us what the Core Update March 2025 was targetting:

The Google March 2025 Core Update, which ran from March 13 to March 27, aimed to improve search quality by prioritizing relevant and satisfying content and reducing low-quality content. Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Purpose:

The update was designed to better surface relevant and satisfying content for searchers across all types of sites.

Timeline: The rollout began on March 13, 2025, and completed around March 27, 2025, taking about two weeks.

Focus:

Google stated that this update, like previous ones, focuses on improving search quality by prioritizing helpful, relevant content and reducing the visibility of low-quality pages.

Impact: The update caused significant ranking volatility for many websites during its rollout.

Google's Advice:

Google advises focusing on creating high-quality, user-centric content rather than attempting to address specific ranking fluctuations after an update.

No Specific Actions:

Google has not provided specific actions to take to recover from a negative ranking impact, suggesting that a negative impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.

Ongoing Efforts:

Google noted that they will continue to surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout the year. `

So there we go then. Clear, right?

Well not really. My site was not thin content. Each page was accompanied by an indepth article of around 1500 words. Each page had an FAQ section, graphs, charts and pictures. It was anything but "thin content".

The site was not AI created either. I used AI as a research tool, but each page was curated and put together by your truly.

“There aren’t specific actions to take to recover. A negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.” -- Barry Schwartz

So what did happen?

Well I'm still not 100% clear.

I would guess that during the core update, most of my keywords dropped from the 80-90 positions that they were in to above 100, and then I just got degraded in general as a low authority site.

“Google added… some sites may never recover fully.” -- Barry Schwartz

Another possibility is that I just didn't have the EEAT or Authority signals to back up some of the personal finance calculators that I'd created, and I was getting shut down for some YMYL reasons (even though I had plenty of calculators that weren't anything to do with YMYL topics).

I'm not the only one to be hit:

“I lost 30% of my Google traffic in March 2024, I now have lost 40% more… I’m at 70% loss… shifting my entire mindset to focus on email and digital products.”

“Biggest drop since Panda… Drop is about -70%.”

This really goes to show that no one is safe. Everyone needs to diversify their traffic and not rely sole on Google as their traffic source.

Everyone needs to be looking at SEO for reddit and forums, brand recognition through niche sites, sentiment driven posts rather than just keyword rich pages. The landscape has changed, and businesses need to change with it.

What now?

My plan is this:

de-index any YMYL pages and focus on calculators that are entirely safe in Googles eyes.

I'll then start building a few more backlinks and see if that kicks Google back in to action to re-rank my site.

I'll be posting more about this in the coming months to let y'all know if this plan has worked.

I also have 3 other case study sites I'm working on to keep on top of what's working and what's not in the realms of SEO and brand bbuilding.

Thanks for reading.