From Southport hair salons to regional ecommerce shops, many UK businesses still report quieter days, fewer emails and fewer walk-ins. Search positions dipped in spring, traffic fell in early summer, and visibility has not returned to previous levels. For many owners, the update feels less like a short shock and more like a permanent line in the sand.
Google still holds around 90% of global search share, with the UK among its strongest markets. When rankings move, local revenue moves with them. At the same time, Google’s AI features are changing how people search, often answering questions before a user clicks any result.
For UK SMEs, this has turned a technical update into a long-running business story. Let’s explore the changes and the effect it’s having on local businesses, and steps business can take to stay ahead.
What Changed in March 2025
Google’s March 2025 core update began rolling out on 13 March and completed within two weeks. Industry trackers described it as a regular core update in scale, yet agencies in the UK quickly linked it to a wider “web quality” push.
The update sat on top of new spam policies introduced in 2024, which targeted three practices in particular:
- Scaled content abuse – large volumes of low-value pages, often AI-assisted, created with little oversight
- Expired domain abuse – buying old domains only to pass on ranking signals to unrelated content
- Site reputation abuse – hosting third party content of much lower quality than the main site
Google framed these policies as a way to reduce “unoriginal, low-quality content” in search. The policy shift exposed a common pattern among smaller UK sites. Old brochure designs, thin service pages and historic link building from low-quality directories no longer pass as “good enough”.
Why Local Businesses Felt the Shock First
Local firms often rely on one of two search patterns. Either a “near me” or town-based query, or a branded search for the business name. In both cases, Google’s local map listings and organic results influence where residents spend money.
Many SMEs entered 2025 with:
- Out-of-date content that no longer reflects current services
- Historic backlinks from generic article sites or old directories
- Slow mobile performance on older templates
Once the Web Quality update and spam policies took full effect, weak link profiles and thin pages lost ground to stronger national domains, large platforms and fresher local competitors.
The pressure is not limited to small firms. Analysis shared by Press Gazette, based on Sistrix data, found 42 of 73 leading UK news sites recorded lower visibility in Google in 2025 than ten months earlier. If national publishers lose ground, smaller local outlets and business sites with far less domain strength face an even steeper climb.
New Search Behaviours Caused by AI Overviews
The picture does not end with rankings. Even strong positions produce fewer visits than before.
Similarweb’s report shows a steep rise in “zero-click” behaviour, where users finish a session on Google’s page without visiting any external site. The share of zero-click searches rose from 56% in May 2024 to 69% in May 2025, following the wider rollout of AI Overviews.
AI Overviews sit above traditional blue links and often answer common questions directly. For news publishers, that shift has contributed to a fall in organic visits from over 2.3 billion in 2024 to under 1.7 billion within one year, according to the same dataset.
For local business owners, the pattern looks straightforward. Residents search for a service, scan the AI summary, glance at ratings or a map, then leave. Fewer users scroll to the full list of organic results. A position on page one still matters, yet the reward from that position feels smaller.
Regulators Step In But Relief Remains Slow
Regulators in the UK and Europe have begun to respond to these shifts.
In January 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act opened an investigation into whether Google holds “strategic market status” in search and search advertising. By October, Google had been designated with that status, confirming the regulator’s view that the company holds “substantial and entrenched market power” in UK search.
The CMA and government have trailed possible remedies, including:
- Fairer ranking for competitors
- Clearer presentation of alternative search engines
- Greater transparency around how Google orders results
In parallel, the European Commission has opened an antitrust probe into Google’s “site reputation abuse” spam policy, following publisher complaints that the rule harms legitimate media who host commercial content.
These steps signal a shift in oversight of search, yet they do not restore lost traffic for Southport hairdressers or regional online shops today. Change will move through consultations, roadmaps and technical remedies at a slower pace than business cash flow.
How Experts Say Businesses Can Recover
Google stresses that recovery from a core update depends on stronger signals across the board, not quick tricks. For owners, that means a longer period where search exposure and real-world revenue stay out of sync.
SEO specialists at Jodana, say the websites struggling the most eight months after the Web Quality update are those relying on outdated tactics or weak backlink profiles. “The update exposed how vulnerable many UK SMEs were,” the agency explained. “Without strong authority signals and consistent, trustworthy content, recovery has been far slower than most expected.”
That means businesses in the UK need to place a stronger emphasis on clear authorship, real expertise and user experience, in line with Google’s guidance around E-E-A-T and Core Web Vitals. Richer pages with visible experts, helpful on-page detail and fast loading times fare better through subsequent updates in June and August.
Search in 2026 and the Road Ahead
Looking ahead, experts see a search environment that depends less on a single set of ten blue links.
Google continues to roll out AI Mode and AI Overviews in more markets and languages, turning search on mobile into a more conversational experience. At the same time, AI chatbots and social platforms play a growing role in how people research products, services and news.
For UK regulators, the task is to ensure that firms with strategic market status do not block fair access to audiences. For UK businesses, the task is to build trust, authority and useful content in a system where fewer searches lead to a click at all.
Eight months on from the Web Quality update, many smaller sites are still trying to climb back. The question for 2026 is not whether Google will roll out another core update. It is whether UK firms, regulators and search platforms can reach a more stable balance between quality control, AI convenience and the visibility local businesses need to survive.