Danny Sullivan from Google responded to numerous questions about the unconfirmed Google February update early this morning saying "We do updates all the time." This is the same statement he made for the November 2019 update. In fact, in November we took this response as confirmation that there was an update, just not "broad core update."
Google wrote on Twitter "We do updates all the time. I would suggest rereading our general advice about this:"
We do updates all the time. I would suggest rereading our general advice about this: https://t.co/aL4QObvvhH
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) February 13, 2020
Google did not say this was not an update, that nothing happened. Google in fact said they there was an update, many of them. To say there was no update is inaccurate according to this statement, espesially when (1) Google said "we do updates all the time" and (2) the data from tools and the community show a big shift.
When it comes to core updates, Google pre-announces those, and this was not what one would call a broad core update.
But this could have been a search algorithm update unrelated to the core updates. It could have been a bug released somewhere that was reverted, hence all the fluctuations being seen in the data, site analytics and tracking tools. Either way, Google did not say no update at all happened. It is just one of those updates that Google is not talking about and has nothing to share about.
Here is Google's statement from the November update:
Sometimes, a particular update might be broadly noticeable. We share about those when we feel there is actionable guidance for content owners. For example, when our Speed Update happened, we gave months of advanced notice and advice….https://t.co/Nwi8I9rooP
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 12, 2019
Again, we have updates that happen all the time in Google Search. If we don’t share about them, there is no particular actionable guidance to follow nor changes to make other than to keep focused on great content as we’ve advised generally such as here: https://t.co/e5ZQUA3RC6
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 12, 2019
From what I have been reading, those sites impacted by this early on are seeing huge changes over the past five days. Things do now seem to be settling down with whatever update(s) happened over the weekend through Wednesday (February 7th through February 12th). It was not a big broad core update but it was something and hopefully it was something that Google tweaked and reverted but I am not sure.
Just look at this new chart from Glenn Gabe showing one specific site that was impacted and then reverted back days later:
To those asking about the site that was dropping/recovering by 60% starting on ~2/7, here is BOTH the GSC data and @SEMrush data. Notice how they line up almost perfectly (trending-wise). So for this site, whatever Google pushed on 2/7, they rolled back. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/2YlliGnk4K
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 13, 2020
SEOClarity is saying it sees a lot of reversals from the February 7th changes now as well:
Flipping the flop! We’re seeing major restorations of the ranking changes on Google from the weekend. Here’s what we’re seeing with some speculation on why there’s a reversal. https://t.co/BlSWD27WWv
— Mark Traphagen (@marktraphagen) February 13, 2020
Weird, right? But it does explain the chatter and tools going insane.
Forum discussion at Twitter, WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
