Yesterday at around 3:50pm ET Google said the new Google May 2020 Core Update is now rolling out. Google said on Twitter "we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year." "It is called the May 2020 Core Update," Google added. Google also said "it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out." This is big enough of a Google Algorithm Update for Google to announce it. The last time Google announced a search algorithm update was the January core update, which was big.
Here are the tweets announcing it:
The May 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 4, 2020
Googlers really did not say much outside of this. I tried to get Gary Illyes from Google to renamed it or give it a pet name but he wouldn't budge.
Last time i did this i got a WTF email from the leads, so... Fred?
— Socially distant Gary Illyes (@methode) May 4, 2020
Previously there was a January core update and before that there was a September 2019 update, which was slow to roll out and wasn't a shockingly upsetting one.
It is early on but we are seeing third-party signs, outside of the Google announcement, of this happening. I should note, we have seen many unconfirmed Google updates between now and the January core update.
First, let's start with the SEO community chatter from the various forums. Again, it is early, so I will be tracking it over the next few days and weeks and report back when I see more to share.
It's pandemic and I don't want Google updates to crush me at this time of financial crisis. I'm scared sad
At around 1am, but it's not a big move, ~10%. It is still too early to tell if this is real or just normal variations, but as I said it's positive, which is better than negative.
Okay, now I am seeing crazy swings. Monitoring KWs in various verticals, and so far, the volatility appears massive. Some major national brands that were rank at the top for very competitive financial KWs dropped 10+ rankings. Seeing massive swings in health as well. This looks big so far.
Not seeing anything significant on my end. Might have to wait a bit longer.
Well, I know it's early going, but I've never seen my traffic just die like this before. Just watching some keywords, blinking in and out, some falling about 10 pages. Traffic has completely flatlined. I mean it's dead. I've never seen anything like this, even during past updates.Usually it's just a kind of gradual slide.
Lots of movement in my widget sector, personally my sites are doing well so far although a few surprising drops, my initial impressions are the results look a bit cleaner with not so much spam however we'll see what the next few days bring.
I was ranking #11 for a keyword, so I bought some strong links for it and I landed on #2. A week later, there's a Google update and I go back to #11. Later, I get some strong links again and go back to #2.And now, with this update? I went to #18.
Could the negative change in my SERPs a result from the update?I never had such a massive fall before with my keywords.
Will they recover over time? I never used PBNs ore something.
I have some YMYL sites and the April update boosted my traffic 3x. This update, however, didn't do anything, it's all the same for me, at least for now.All I noticed yesterday was a decrease in traffic for a few hours and then it jumped up again.
Here we go... No drastic changes on my sites yet... I got hit by earlier update on my medical sites, I guess it's not fully deployed yet.
I've lost about 30% of my traffic already. I didn't even know what is going on until i found that there's a Google update again..
I've just had a look at one of my niches and I've went from #8 to #46. No links have been built to that page by me. The links that have been built are ones that other sites have mentioned me in. These sites aren't spammy ones.
Man, I lost 50% of my traffic so far. Literally lost all of my featured snippets. This is not good.
Here are the tools; some are showing changes and many are not.
So this is the early community chatter and the early reports from the third-party tool providers.
The big check is now for the SEOs to dig in and check their analytics over the next couple of days to see the true impact. I'll be watching, share your data with me on Twitter please.
Side note: Google decided not to delay the core update after some speculation that Google might delay it or postpone it over the virus.
Forum discussion at Twitter, WebmasterWorld, Black Hat World and Local Search Forums.
Update: Here is a story on some examples of sites hit by this update.
