I am seeing some really early signs from the SEO community chatter around a possible Google update. It is really early, so it may be nothing but I wanted to report it just in case.
I spotted several threads in the Google Webmaster Help forums with complaints about ranking drops - which is not unusual to see but there were more complaints than normal over the past couple days. I also see that the WebmasterWorld thread has unusually more chatter over the past two days.
Here are some quotes from that thread around Penguin and Panda over the past few days:
Do you think it is panda? I have checked it against the various google penalty checkers and it has never taken a hit on any panda or penguin penalty before. But this year I have seen a gradual decline in traffic/quality of traffic. It seems to come in waves of decline followed by a spike, then further down again.
Seen more movement than I have in almost 1.5 years on a penguin hit site. Maybe its coming for a visit? Nothing significant especially just from 1 site, but if you guys are seeing it too that might mean something.
Could it be that this last updated was a new Panda round? It feels and smells like Panda. Traffic from google is so bad, no user engagement, no user interaction, bounce nearly 90%. This is the first time we see something bad for 10 month now.
A new low traffic period from traffic arrived. google user engagement: Zero, sales : Zero, bounce 100%, foreing traffic 50%, traffic mismatch 100%. All top traffic pages are gone. Seeing it on 5 sites right now.THIS is accounting only for google traffic. bing and other sources are steady up.
And again: this smells like Panda.
There is also discussion around changes to link counts in the Google Search Console.
Again, this may be nothing, but I wanted to keep you all updated on the latest change in community chatter.
Panda is a continuous roll out and happens by itself now. Google will likely never announce another Panda update again, but we are patiently awaiting a Penguin update soon.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
