On Friday, we reported some early chatter around a Google update possibly kicking off Friday morning.
Well, as expected, it seems to have heated up over the weekend. Not only has the chatter spiked up a lot, so have some of the automated Google tracking tools.
Many folks are thinking it is somewhat related to Panda but it is not clear yet. The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has chatter starting May 1st through today, here are some comments:
Today, our traffic is up nicely over Friday, April 17 (two weeks ago). What's interesting is that I'm seeing double-digit increases for most Continental European countries but single-digit increases elsewhere.
There's something definitely going on, my site was always affected by the pandas, and now i'm up by 5%, so i guess there was a panda update starting on thursday i guess... The change is not big, but for me it means that after some hard work, finally Panda gave me some love.
I noticed that beginning on Monday 04/27 our traffic began to significantly decline. It has gotten worse day after day. Today, 5/2 we are running 30% less hour over hour comparing to last Saturday 4/25. Trying to find more information on the update people have noticed 4/28 / 4/29.
Things are really moving about tonight wonder if its a panda update. Looks like Google Dance
Something huge went down in the UK overnight. I don't think it's affected all verticals yet and it doesn't appear to be isolated to mobile search.
The comments go on and on...
Mozcast showed huge spikes on Sunday and spikes also on Saturday, showing 91 degrees on Sunday, which is huge. SERPs.com has shown large changes on Saturday, like Mozcast, but has not yet updated for Sunday. Lots of fluctuations reported at SERP Metrics as well. Algoroo isn't spiking but showing changes and same with Advanced Web Ranking.
Even this site shows an uptick from SearchMetrics with a 58% increase in search visibility and yes, this site was hit by Panda back in October/September:
But the truth is, Google Analytics doesn't show much of a change in referrals from Google organic search over this weekend compared to the past few weekends - but traffic is different from visibility in SERPs.
Did you notice a Panda update over the weekend? Maybe it was another algorithm? This is not mobile related exactly.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Cre8asite Forums.
Update: Glenn Gabe was nice enough to share a chart with us on Twitter:
I found an example of a traditional Panda hit. And it's HUGE. ~85% decrease, starting on 4/28. Holy smokes #seo pic.twitter.com/RaLPNmRv3o
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 4, 2015Update: Google told me that no update happened over the weekend.
