I am seeing an increase in chatter amongst the SEO industry around a possible Google search ranking algorithm update around Friday, May 7th and then again on Sunday, May 9th. Even some of the tools are showing the changes as well. But it doesn't seem to be a massive update, like some previous Google updates.
The chatter started to spiked up on May 7th. Then it died down and spiked back up on May 9th. Here is some of the chatter from WebmasterWorld:
Terrible traffic today...total traffic -18%, USA -26%, home page -36%. Traffic has been trending down all week with no recovery from the March 15th update
Same here, traffic dropped a lot today. They are probably starting to roll-out their Core Vitals update?
Woke up to find that Google wiped out one entire swath of my highest ranking terms this morning. Where I was ranking #1 for years I am now at #42. About five different terms including the same keyword (a place name) has dropped between 26 and 41 spots all at the same time. It has nothing to do with domain authority apparently, as mine is higher than some of the sites that stayed in the top five. Is anyone else seeing place related searches get whacked over time?
Another huge drop today. The rollercoaster has already become a standard in my graphics :-|
I'm dropping terms I've ranked for in first place for 5+ years now. Nothing changed. Not sure what they doing as lower-ranked spammy sites with terrible content ranking higher. Lowest users yesterday in years and dropping 3% every day, this update is not good its all over the place.
Then on May 9th:
Traffic was just awful today...USA -35%, Canada -42%, Australia -65% from a normal Sunday. Traffic to my home page has declined 50% in a straight line over the last month, and today was down 32% from the norm.
Bad weekend, worst Sunday. About 40% less than usual. Maybe because of Mother's Day and good weather.
Terrible weekend, the worst Sunday for entire 10-year website history about 40% down. Don't know what is going on with Google AI but looks like old niche sites overtaken by spam, newly created sites with poor content and news spam articles. Not good.
I can confirm the above. Lowest traffic in 2 years yesterday (Sunday). Not sure if an algorithm update or just weekend/mothers' day or anything else. Was there some kind of major event/holiday?
Not quite as bad here as some others have mentioned - but things have been utterly devastating for some time now. That's despite rankings being steady. In fact - decent improvement in rankings on Sunday = lowest CTR for a Sunday since Feb (LOL!)Today, however, is very, very, very, very bad. To that point again where I have to constantly check to make sure the site has not gone down.
The algorithm was definitely tweaked again (on 8 or 9 May). I am starting to receive old errors all over gain from 2020 that were already validated as fixed at the time and multiple times throughout 2021.
Here are some of the charts from the tool providers:
The other tools are more quiet on those days - which is interesting.
Did you notice changes in your organic Google traffic around May 7th and May 9th?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
