There seems to be significant SEO community chatter along with most of the tracking tools showing big volatility in the Google search results in the past 24-hours. This comes just a day or so after Google confirmed the December 2020 core update is done rolling out and on the 8th day of Chanukah.
I figure 8th Day is a good name for a band or something, so why not for a Google update. Okay, in all seriousness, it is weird to see such big fluctuations right after a big core update has officially rolled out. Maybe Google wanted to put a line in the sand and not have one big update overlap with another update. Google has overlapped big updates before, sometimes more than three big updates in the same week. And it makes it impossible for SEOs and site owners to know what is going on.
So what is going on? I doubt Google would talk about this update, the 8th Day update, but I do doubt it is the core update. Google wouldn't confirm it was done rolling out and then have it continue to roll out. Maybe it is another update of some sorts or maybe it is tweaks to the core update? I really do not know. It also might be related to suspected but not confirmed indexing issues with Google.
Here is some of the chatter from WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World forums:
A 76% drop in USA traffic this morning by 10am! That includes a 49% drop in visits to my home page and a 36% drop in searches overall. Every day a new rotation of which pages drop through the floor. Lately it's been my home page that has gotten hammered, while traffic to lower level pages seems to have improved. Anyone else seeing this?
Seeing indexing issues again. Console says 'URL is on Google' but it's not.
I am also seeing issues with indexing.
Seems there's a lot more change today following this December core update.
Traffic is down and Semrush is reporting movements. Not good
Is Google December 2020 Core Update Really Over? I don't think so. My traffic started dropping after 16th December. Semrush meter showing 8.4 out of 10.
I don't think it's over. My traffic also started dropping on 16th.
I'm still losing position of keywords on my affected site.
Yet another huge spike in Semrush Sensor. Is the update really over? What is Google upto now?
There are also comments on this blog about the changes:
Same, massive movements today. Not seen changes like this since the unofficial June update.
Here are the tracking tools, some are not yet updated this morning but I will update later throughout the day.
So what are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
