Google search results for ‘Strait of Hormuz’ search including The Guardian, The Independent and ITV News on 10 April 2026
The Guardian, Money Saving Expert, Substack and The New York Times appear to have been the biggest winners from Google’s latest core update, according to new Sistrix data.
But overall there was “little impact” on news websites, SEO consultant Barry Adams told Press Gazette.
Google described the rollout as “a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites”, the standard wording for its core algorithm updates when there is not a specific behaviour being targeted.
It rolled out between 27 March and 8 April, following quickly behind a separate update designed to target spam sites.
Sistrix has now shared data showing how the search visibility index scores of major UK and US news websites changed during that period.
In the UK, The Guardian saw the greatest absolute visibility gain of 9.014 points, rising to 228.076 – already by far the highest visibility score for a newsbrand.
The Guardian remains down compared to the 259.1 search visibility score it was on before December’s more significant Google core update.
Sistrix’s Visibility Index measures how visible a website is in Google search results, assigning higher scores to sites that rank better in search results.
The score draws on organic (unpaid) search results and does not include Top Stories boxes, AI Overviews or the Discover news feed.
Behind The Guardian, Money Saving Expert saw an increase of 8.542 to 106.946, the second-highest visibility score in our analysis.
It was followed by Substack (encompassing publications hosted on the platform with substack.com in the URL), rising by 8.122 points to 26.5531. Next was The New York Times (up by 4.6848 to 44.5424) and The Telegraph (up by 3.1646 to 49.3951).
However these are all relatively small changes compared to some core updates.
Adams told Press Gazette: “While these gains by The Guardian, The New York Times, Substack, and Money Saving Expert look impressive on the surface, in the wider context of their existing VI scores they fall well within the margin of normal fluctuations. This core update passed with little impact on news websites.
“Disappointingly, neither this core update nor its preceding spam update have done anything to mitigate the abundance of spam and disinformation in Google’s AI Overviews, where self-serving listicles and low-effort content still easily manipulate citations and links.”
Of 72 news websites included in the UK data, 46 saw their search visibility score increase and 28 were down. But the vast majority saw absolute change of up to +1 or -1.
In the US, The New York Times saw the biggest absolute visibility change going from 125.515 to 134.089.
It was followed by Substack (going from 27.2232 to 34.6777) and then Fox News (up 4.2442 points to 13.0174), USA Today (up 2.3372 to 31.3371) and The Guardian (up 1.6857 to 41.2232).
Of 78 news websites, half (39) saw growth in their search visibility in the US. Of these, 31 saw change of less than one point.
Three news websites saw an absolute change of two points or more: Rolling Stone was down -2.0798 to 13.8268, Yahoo Finance was down -5.3199 to 84.6292 and US News & World Report fell by -5.388 to 127.765.
Email [email protected] to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog