There may have been an algorithm update with the Google search rankings over the weekend, starting around March 9th, Friday through the whole weekend. There is chatter both at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World and some sporadic complaints (which is not uncommon) in the Google Webmaster Help forums.
See the update below where Google confirmed the update.
Some are saying this was a reversal or a big change to what we called the Maccabees Update that touched down on December 12th. I felt that update targeted mostly but not only keyword permutation sites amongst others (although there was probably several updates within the same time frame).
Here are some of the chatter from WebmasterWorld:
From being stable for the longest time, we now see a rather big drop across the board on mobile positions. Desktop is not moving.
My website since yesterday March 9 has lost traffic drastically, I have 50% less traffic. The web has been growing during the last months, keeping the first positions and yesterday suddenly the traffic began to descend... Keywords in 1-3 position, now have dropped to 10 or 30 position.
So looks like traffic drop going for both desktop and mobile, for desktop about -20% , for mobile/tablet -25%
We were one of the sites affected by the December 12th drop. Since Friday, we've seen traffic levels go back up to around that level. Maybe too early to tell just yet but something is happening again!
Just to avoid being someone who only posts when things go badly for me, I just wanted to add that on Mar 9, my average rankings in Search Console was 7.8, the first time since Dec 12, 2017 it has been better than 8
The Black Hat World chatter:
I am seeing a massive update in my serps in last 2 days, some sites going up tp 30% and some going down to 50%..... Also a LOT spam sites in first 3 pages
I’m seeing big google dance in my kw since yesterday
I thought it was just me, and googles usual reshuffle, but I have seen a lot of sites I own going down but some came back up today, something is deffo happening, the exact same time as it happened last year to me and I lost a lot of my income spent the rest of last year building it back up again and yesterday I noticed massive loss again in traffic and in rankings but it seems to be all over the place as my competitors are bouncing around as well with lots of amazon/google books ranking in the adult niche as well as jimdo and etsy really bizzare. But hey ho just let it settle it down. This is actually why i came to the Bhw Forum today to see if anyone had posted anything
It is a bit too early for me to say if I strongly think there was an update but I am leaning towards yes, there was an update on March 9th and 10th. Please comment below with your own analysis and let me know what you see since the weekend?
Here are some of the automated tracking tools charts.
Forum discussion at t WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
Update: Google confirmed there was an update but says it was not Maccabee related or anything specific to any update:
Also, it’s not the “Maccabees Update” as you wrote because, as we said then, there was no single update like that: https://t.co/ijLqSoidxb
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 12, 2018
Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year....
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 12, 2018
There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 12, 2018
Because it's a core algorithm update, yes, there's no official name for it.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 12, 2018
