On Monday, we reported about the ongoing chatter around a potential Google search algorithm update that touched down on November 10th of last week. Some of the automated tracking tools picked up on it and there was some chatter.
I asked Google's John Mueller about it on his hangout yesterday at the 7:48 mark into the video and he said, there is nothing to announce around that specific date.
Since I covered this update on Monday, the past two days, the chatter and discussion in the community around this update heated up at the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread. The tools did calm down recently but not the chatter.
Of course, Gary Illyes almost immediately replied to my tweet on Monday saying "most likely" when I asked about a Google update:
@rustybrick most likely
— Gary Illyes (@methode) November 14, 2016
Here is the transcript of my questions and answer with John Mueller when I asked about there being an update on November 10th:
John Mueller: I have no idea.
I think you asked Gary if we did any algorithm changes and he said, most likely we did, we do algorithm changes every day.
Barry Schwartz: I didn’t ask, he just offered up the answer. He said yes, we do changes all the time.
John Mueller: Yea, we do changes all the time.
And it is also sometimes tricky, we make these changes, we discuss these changes for a long time, and then at some point they roll out, and it takes a certain amount of time until it is visible.
So it is not like we would like meet in the morning on November 10th and be like, oh, we should push the button today and then everyone will see it today. There is always this time until the results are actually visible. So it is really hard for us to say well, it is this one specific change and that is what you are seeing.
A lot of these changes affect sites in different ways and different kinds of sites. So it might be that most sites didn’t see any changes at all and some sites see really strong changes. So that is really hard to kind of generalize.
Barry Schwartz: Yea. It just seems like the chatter is heating up a bit and people are saying Penguin rolled back, Penguin, there is a new Penguin, it is something else.
So you guys are not naming anything or aware of anything specific for that date, November 10th.
John Mueller: I don’t think we have anything specific to announce for that date.
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at Google+.
Update: Glenn Gabe shared a chart of a site that got hit and I know of many others:
I've been digging into the algo update from 11/9 & 11/10. Here's a good example of the movement. Still digging in... :) #seo @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/LuC982A4Dc
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 16, 2016
@rustybrick And if you want the flip side, here's another. Big surge in search visibility on 11/10. That's an interesting one. :) pic.twitter.com/PPhaKROCCP
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 16, 2016
