Mid-may we reported of a Google update brewing that led to more fluctuations around May 17th or so. Now I am seeing some chatter and signs from the tracking tools of an update happening today, May 24th. Some of the chatter is around this update is that it is sporadic, that one hour the results are all different and the next, the search results are back to normal.
We have chatter at both WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World on this update. The chatter, like I said above, is not consistent and a bit off from normal chatter. Either it is a bit too early for the SEO community to pick it up or the fluctuations in the Google search results are all over the place.
The forums have people saying a few things, but mostly about their rankings jumping all over the place. Some reference a Yoast plugin bug causing issues, but this is likely unrelated to any of that. Others just say Google did some sort of algorithm update. Here is some of the chatter:
We're seeing a completely different set of results today. Much more like the results from 3 months ago... more tweaks?
More oddball traffic patterns...three days in a row, one conversion at 7am +/- 15min...then nothing the rest of the day. Traffic coming in drip fashion again, same old same old. Referral spam is rampant.
To me it look a bit like they reversed the update they did in early march, the sites I see dropping are the sites that went up in early march and now returned to the "old" positions.
The Yoast issue isn't related to these drops, it's certainly not helpful, but non-Wordpress sites were affected the same way at about the same time. Would be nice if the solution would be that easy, but unfortunately it isn't for sure.
Let me share screen shots from the tools as well:
Mozcast:
SERPMetrics:
Algoroo:
Accuranker:
RankRanger:
SEMRush:
Are you noticing changes in your Google organic rankings and/or Google organic traffic this morning?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
