If you run a plumbing firm out of Acton or a florist on Uxbridge Road, you probably saw the headlines in early June and wondered whether your phone was about to stop ringing. Google’s May 2026 core update finished rolling out on 2 June, after twelve days, and it was the fourth ranking change of the year. That’s a lot of moving ground for anyone who just wants to be found.
Here’s the calmer picture. The sites that took a knock were mostly health, finance and legal pages with no real expertise behind them, thin online shops and affiliate sites built around keyword volume. Local service businesses largely held steady, because Google Business Profile signals, reviews and location-specific content barely moved.
That tells you where to put your effort. Check the profile first: opening hours, services, photos taken this year, and a reply to every review. Then read your three most important pages as a customer standing in Shepherd’s Bush would read them. If a paragraph sounds like it was written for a robot, rewrite it as plain advice with a price range, a postcode area and a name.
And keep an eye on Search Console. Compare the last 28 days with the 28 before. A drop on one page points to that page; a drop right across the site points to something bigger. Updates are now arriving every couple of months, so a ten-minute check each month beats panicking once a year.
If you’d rather have someone read the numbers for you, SEO Optimizers work from their office at 72 Hammersmith Road, W14, and look after search engine optimisation for businesses across West London. Have a look at www.seooptimizers.co.uk for the services, or ring the team on 020 3793 8337 and ask for a straight answer.