We reported on Saturday that the Google March 2024 core update seemed to have touched down on land, and we saw a lot of sites start to report major ranking drops, and the third-party tracking tools noticed big volatility. That all calmed on Sunday through today but we also had reports of reversals.
We also had Google release tons of manual actions last week, around Wednesday and Thursday. Google also released the March 2024 spam update at the same time, so a lot of what we are seeing across core, spam and manual actions - all at the same time.
Now we are seeing some reversals, not many, but some, while the Google search results seem to calm for a bit based on those third-party tracking tools.
Let me be clear, these updates are far from over. The spam update will roll out for at least another week and the core update will roll out for another few weeks - so we still are expecting a lot more from these updates. Again, what you are seeing now is not the end of it.
Let me share some of the reversals I saw talked about across social.
Rahul posted a screenshot showing a drop on the 9th, as we reported and then it bounced back the next day - he posted this on X - he said it was algorithmic and not a manual action:
Eliav also posted a similar chart from Google Search Console on X:
Also on WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World here are some comments about reversals:
Looks like there was some correction happening on Sunday after it hit one of our sites on Mar 7-8 .
Is anyone seeing any recovery?I had 50% of our network wiped out over 6/7 March. I saw 10% have a moderate recovery on 10 March.
11/12 March appears to plateaued with 40% loss of websites.
Yesterday traffic -30%. Today -3%
My site lost nearly all it's traffic on March 7th Kept going gradually down until the 9th, same for the 10th Yesterday it shot back up to 50% what it previously was and today so far I'm getting regular visitors again so might continue going up again....
But it seems most are not noticing any sort of recovery from what slammed down on Friday and Saturday. I asked in the comments area over here.
Then we had an example of a manual actions deindexing a site, then the site came back fully and then it went away again:
A number of sites that were deindexed during the Google manual actions are back - comments about it at https://t.co/vI7Oc4cC5q pic.twitter.com/OajjsvVT89
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 11, 2024
gone again as of last night pic.twitter.com/hWPgzpXZlD
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 12, 2024
So I posted this GIF last night on X:
A good GIF to showcase what's going on now with the Google March updates pic.twitter.com/bMNh17M3AM
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 11, 2024
Let me share some fresh third-party tracking tool data for you all, while I am here:
Are you noticing any of this rocking back and forth with your sites? What do you think is going on?
In summary:
- It seems some manual actions deindexed a ton of sites, some of those sites recovered for a day and are now deindexed again.
- The core or spam update hit a lot of sites algorithmically on Friday and Saturday, most are still hit but some recovered in on Monday
The issue is that we had three different things roll out now: (1) the manual actions for new spam policies, (2) the algorithmic March 2024 spam update, and (3) the algorithmic March 2024 core update.
We will continue to report the bumps along the way...
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
