I've been on the edge about if I should report or not report some of the chatter and signals I am seeing around a possible Google search ranking algorithm update. I was seeing some somewhat small signs since the weekend of an update but those signals are picking up a little bit more a few days in.
So I figured I'd document it and share what I see thus far. There have been some people asking me if there was an update over the weekend. I do not think there was a big update, maybe something that impacted specific niches or tactics but nothing widespread like a core update.
The last unconfirmed update I reported on was on February 17th and of course, all the confusion on passage ranking and when it was released.
But starting over the weekend there has been chatter at both WebmasterWorld and BlackHatWorld about another update this weekend. Here is some of that chatter:
How is your USA traffic? Traffic to my home page is down 65% today at 11:30am...USA down 41% overall, however my UK traffic has surged 60% along with AU and CA. It actually seems that traffic is being throttled hour by hour now. USA traffic might pick up later in the day, but in general whatever this change is it's caused me to lose a considerable amount of traffic and customers since the 8th. It could be Passage Indexing or not, only time will tell.
Traffic totally died off today. It's like everyone just suddenly disappeared from the surface of this planet and gone somewhere else.
This Google update (yes, I'm calling it an update because that's really what it is) is like Lindsay Lohan on meth...very erratic and highly destructive. Traffic is being throttled by the hour now. Yesterday I started with UK traffic surging and USA way down. By end of day UK traffic was also down, Canada dropped 50%. Today USA / CA / AU traffic all up but UK is down 57%. Every day different, and even surging or dropping like a stone from hour to hour. Anyone else seeing this?
Has anyone seen anything over this weekend? I have 2 sites, 1 recovered with the December core update, and 1 got hit. I'm now seeing a complete reversal over the weekend for the sites, the recovered one has been hit hard and the one that got hit has returned to pre-December rankings. The one that got hit again is a really strange one, the dreaded filter is really smashing it down, it's actively pushing it down for some reason, 1 KW went from page 5-6 to page 14, most others phrases have dropped 3-6 pages
I see some position movements since Sunday. Some positions going up and some are going down. Looks like another random update is on its way.
Apparently there is another update, I lost more than 70% of my traffic since Sunday.
Yes, I expected people to write now. My main website is dancing like crazy. Down 40 keywords on Sunday - up 40 keywords today, totally random.
My traffic yesterday actually went up a good 30% compared to the past month. Not sure how today is going to go, but yesterday was more comparable to pre-January update. I actually have been busy so I have done few changes in the past 5-6 weeks on this one site.
Some of the tracking tools are showing some fluctuations, but the tools are not 100% in sync with each other.
So if you saw some changes since the weekend, you are not alone.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and BlackHatWorld.
