There is a lot of chatter in the past 24-hours in the SEO forums, mostly at WebmasterWorld, around Google organic traffic fluctuations. It seems that it might be related to a bug with Google Analytics in a short period of time.
Just to be clear - I am not really seeing too many complaining about ranking changes right now. Most that do complain say it is related to a bug in Google Analytics.
Here are some of the comments in the forums.
My Website took a big hit and traffic is at its lowest(below 100) since last 1 hour. I have never seen this much drop since June. Is everyone facing the same issue?
Google Analytics is having bug and showing wrong data for most of websites.
Guys, I'm facing with the same thing - both of my websites showing a significant drop in traffic last 2-3 hours. Is this an Analytics bug or we are facing with another move of this "cruel unlogical 8 November beast" and it's an update?
It's GA problems and several people have reported it here and there. Do not panic. And AdSense is having reporting issues too.
I am sailing on the same boat. Been a 50-60% drop according to GA for the last 2-4 hours. Hopefully, it's GA that is broken and not another June-like algo update.
The chatter does go on.
The tracking tools from Moz and friends do not show real fluctuations since last week's December 4th through December 6th fluctuations.
So this seems like a false alarm in terms of a big update happening on December 9th.
The fun tidbit is that the Bill Lambert guy said yesterday in the comments here "Big data push ongoing, do not be surprised to see GA reporting errors, as I've said many times this is your biggest indicator that a (larger than G would like you to believe) update is in progress. All resources go to updating the core rather than free services & as filters come up & down they don't want data leaking out." He said four days ago over here "Another update started yesterday, expect completion by Monday/Tuesday if it goes to plan. Short notice as they are now sending out false info or delaying updates that are signed off due to leaks." I am not too sure about that one but who knows.
Maybe an update is rolling out right now and I do not see it yet. I can always report back tomorrow. But for now, it seems like a lot of chatter around a Google Analytics bug?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
