If you’ve been watching your traffic numbers lately and something felt… off, you’re probably not imagining it.
Google rolled out a major core update in March 2026, and according to data from SE Ranking (shared with Search Engine Land), this one was significantly more volatile than the December 2025 update that came before it.
Like, not even close.
Nearly 80% of top-three results shifted positions, and almost one in four pages that were ranking in the top 10 fell out of the top 100 entirely.
That’s a massive shake-up.
For context, the December update moved about 66.8% of top-3 URLs.
March pushed that to 79.5%.
So yeah… Google wasn’t messing around this time.
Who lost. Who won.
The clearest pattern from this update is that Google seems to be favoring sources that own their lane.
Analysis by SEO experts using Sistrix data found that rankings shifted away from intermediary sites and toward stronger destination sources, with official and institutional sites, specialist and niche publishers, established brands, and dominant platforms all gaining visibility.
On the losing side?
Aggregators, directories, and comparison-driven sites took the most significant hits.
Some specific examples: job aggregators like ZipRecruiter and Glassdoor lost ground, while employer sites and specialized platforms gained.
In health, broad consumer health sites declined, while clinical and research-driven specialist sources gained.
Even YouTube wasn’t spared. It had the largest visibility loss in the entire dataset. Which is wild to think about.
What This Means for Us as Copywriters and SEO People
To be honest a site like this one (filipinowriters.com) is… small.
We’re not WebMD.
We’re not a government agency.
We don’t have a massive domain authority or a newsroom behind us.
And on the surface, that sounds scary after reading all of this.
But the sites that lost weren’t punished for being small.
They were penalized for being in the middle.
Aggregators and directories exist to collect and sort other people’s stuff.
They don’t really own anything.
They’re essentially just curators with no original angle.
That’s the opposite of what we’re doing here.
A niche blog written by actual practitioners, sharing real experience with a specific audience… that’s exactly the kind of thing that fits into the “specialist and niche” category that gained visibility in this update.
The key word being “specialist.”
Not someone who writes about everything for everyone.
Someone who writes about one thing for a specific group of people.
Which, if you’re reading this, is probably you and me.
So I guess we’re safe?
Probly for now.
Based on what this update seems to reward, a few things worth thinking about:
- Own your topic. Don’t try to be a general-purpose freelance blog. The more specific you are about who you help and what you cover, the more you look like a destination rather than an aggregator.
- Write from experience. Solis’s analysis suggests Google is surfacing sources that have actual data and first-hand knowledge. Generic “here are 10 tips” posts are probably more exposed than ever.
- Don’t chase volume for its own sake. Fewer, more genuinely useful articles will likely serve you better than flooding your blog with content just to have content.
The bar for ranking just got raised.
Strong brands, owned data, and direct query value won this update.
Intermediaries now look increasingly exposed.
All I can say is this:
This update is uncomfortable for a lot of sites, but it’s not bad news for people who actually have something to say.
If you’re a copywriter or freelancer building a real body of work around your genuine expertise… you’re probably more aligned with where Google is heading than you think.
Just make sure your content actually shows it. Think E-E-A-T.