There is yet another Google search algorithm ranking update that seems to be going on - it touched down yesterday, Saturday May 22nd. The tracking tools are off the charts, all of them, showing changes in the Google Search results that I have not seen before in a long time. This is at the levels of a core update or the old Penguin and Panda updates.
The chatter in the community is not matching what I am seeing the tracking tools reporting. Maybe there is a delay in the SEO community chatter because it is a weekend or Google tripped up the tools some how. I am thinking it might be something Google did that upset the tools but it is too early to tell. This does seem big and you should check the health of your sites in Google Search.
SEO Chatter:
Surprisingly, the SEO chatter is not at the same levels. Maybe because it is a weekend and a lot of folks are not working or checking but it just doesn't seem right. Normally with the tools being this hot, even over a weekend, the forums have a heck of a lot more to say. I checked many of the other forums, including the black hat forums and even the official Google forums and the chatter is almost nonexistent in those forums. I see complaints in those forums, but nothing from a ranking drop yesterday - at least not yet.
The WebmasterWorld (now moved into a new thread here) forums does have new chatter but again, not at the level I would expect for an update of this magnitude. Here is the new chatter in the forum:
Another day in hell.
Yes, big movement in semrush. Like all past updates it will hit me tomorrow. At the moment things are very quiet on my end. Could this be a core update?
weekend shenanigans becoming a norm now...is it that the SERPS / New AIs don't sleep. :-D
Global site slow'ish today so far however UK sites doing fine.If the UK sites continue like this I may have to increase their base expectations since there have been only four days this month below average and they were all on a weekend at the beginning of the month.
Yower, SEMRush is freaking out. A few of the other sensors seem to be spiking too.This is hell. Never know what to do anymore, where to look...or what is actually evening happening.
Seems to be a indexing/ranking issue in News and Discover for new articles published in the last 36 hours or so. It's stale, except for the extremely high authority sites.
Google is now killing us all off. Worst week in years. Several consecutive days of trickle traffic and zero sales and now.
Saturday I ended with 52.4% to my global site however today is altogether a different story at 11.6% after 11 hours! ...
And even some of this chatter is about the tools going insane and traffic issues from earlier in the week, where we had an unconfirmed update on May 19th and 20th.
Tracking Tools:
Just look at all these tools showing off the chart numbers. I have not seen numbers like this from these tools in a long time.
To summarize the month of May and Google updates, we had a ton of unconfirmed updates including this story for May 22nd, May 19th and 20th, May 16th, May 13th, May 7th and 9th and May 1st.
Go check things out for your sites and let me know.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: Since posting I wanted to share some of the chatter I've been seeing:
Also worth noting that I have SERP screenshots of sites jumping to #1 or #2 over the past few days for head terms only to drop back again to page 2 or 3 already. They were reviews-based queries (i.e. searching for top products for a given category). I'll keep digging. Stay tuned.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 23, 2021
Was a scorcher ☀️ saw a solid amount of movement from my end.
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) May 23, 2021
I got the opposite ... pic.twitter.com/ZIVxrRe7fI
— kumar (@theonlykumar) May 23, 2021
