Earlier this week, we reported on an unconfirmed Google search ranking update on May 1st and 2nd. Well, throughout the week, things have heated up a lot more, and we are seeing more volatility reported by the tools and more SEO chatter within the community.
Again, Google has not confirmed any update is going on but there are definitely signs of an update taking place.
The April 2023 reviews update was the last official Google update published by Google. That finished on April 25th.
Google Tracking Tools
Let's start this time with what the automated tools are showing in terms of volatility. Many of them are showing levels of volatility that you'd see from really big core updates. Something big is happening. Here are those graphs:
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the newer chatter since my last report earlier this week. This is what I am seeing SEOs talking about in public forums and online, mostly here and at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World:
I have been noticing that across the board on my websites dramatic ranking drops in the past 2 days.30% of websites have lost rankings. I'm talking a position decrease of 20-60. Sites that were in the top 3, now banished to page 7.
Looking online I can see only a handful of other webmasters reporting similar.
Google is obviously in the middle of an algorithm update.
My suspicion is it's low content related. Or possibly backlink penalty related as I have used BHW link building packages on majority of my sites.
Yes there is an Google update in May month therefore its happening. Wait for few days may be its get ranked.
From what I can see, it seems this update is effecting low DA sites.Sites with DA 0-4 have completely dropped off the map. DA 5+ have had minimal changes.
Huge drop today! ((Here We Go Again)) :-|
Huge drop here too...it's 10am and my USA traffic is -60%. Uk is -22%. Search is -29%. This is not due to a global slump, you don't lose 90% of the traffic to some pages on your site due to the economy. My ranking hasn't changed much either...in fact it went up today.
We've seen a very slight uptick since May began. Nothing worth getting excited about, but better than continued erosion.
Traffic is all over the place these days...yesterday a huge drop in USA traffic, but by the evening it had mostly recovered and USA ended -4% on the day, while the UK had dropped 40% on the day. This morning again the USA starts the day at -59% and search is -35% at 10am. Every day now some major drop or disappearing act for traffic is sure to occur. I am seeing the top three spots reverting to showing the same few sites over and over...a repeat of 2022.
Another Google update and I'm being crawled again thousands of times by Berlin, Germany ISP / Trafficforce, Uab
Yes, I have noticed a decrease in organic traffic over the past two days.
Traffic went up Monday and Tuesay, but now it's falling again. My experience is that there's always an initial surge, followed by a slump.
So my SERP Checkers notified me I lost some top 10s positions (again, on a losing streak).Check the report and, well, as expected, replaced by sponsored content sites and PDF spams. Along with irrelevant sites from authority pages.
At this point I'm not even surprised and don't bother anymore.
Something big seems to be happening and there is no word from Google on these fluctuations. What are you all noticing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
