Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update July 23rd & 24th?

Chalkboard4 Google 640

We may have had one of those smaller unconfirmed Google Search algorithm and ranking updates over the weekend. It may have started on Friday, July 23rd and spiked more on Saturday July 24th.

I am also wondering if the fluctuations may be related to the soft 404 bug fix, but I do not know. Or maybe folks are noticing less Google traffic from the review stars bug?

Update: Google has announced today a link spam update is being released over the next two weeks. I was going to say the chatter felt like it was more visible in the more black hat areas but maybe this is unrelated since this update reported below was Friday and Saturday and Google said there is a new update today, Monday.

SEO Chatter

There is some chatter, as well as the tracking tools showing signs of an update. Again, this is not a massive core update, but those typical smaller unconfirmed updates that I have not reported on in some time (at least some time for me).

Here is the chatter from WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World:

BushyTop: "More drops this morning for me. A term we ranked top 2 for for over 4 years, we've now dropped to 4, to 6, to now 9."

ichtyous: "Today my home page traffic starts down 70% at 10am. Google definitely has a beef with my sites home page now, it won't allow the page to ranks for any of the terms it's was ranking well on for a decade."
"Huge drop in traffic in the first half of the day yesterday...USA, UK and Canada. 2nd half of the day returned to normal. Today a big recovery of top three ranking terms and normal USA, CA, AU traffic, but UK is down by 68%. I am noticing updates almost every Friday, with UK traffic vanishing on weekends and a big dip in "direct" traffic. Also traffic to my home page mysteriously vanishes for half a day on a regular basis. These are all types of traffic throttling, but also there are way more videos and other types of feeds now, so if you aren't top three you basically get pushed to the end of the page or page two.
In general my traffic is as low now as when I started my website in 2003. The volume is less than half of what it was in 2019. Most of that is Google, but also I think that this summer people are not spending on material goods but on getting out, traveling, eating out etc."

lee_sufc: "UK market here, too. Some of the results for a few keywords now bring up low-quality sites from the US. I really hope this is a mistake somewhere that gets rolled back!"

saladtosser: "UK traffic is abysmal! Google seems to be hitting technically perfect sites that's have ranked well for years for ones with *tons* of issues to put it mildly. Maybe G is thinking these great site owners must the money required for ads or have figured they have spent to many years at the top so a sudden drop will force them into ads? I find it hard to believe Google has thought these sites were amazing for years then just said, nope we got it wrong all these years/updates and pulled the plug on them on a single month/update."

MaikoSophie: "Seems like there's a massive Google update again. I'm noticing many keyword ranking fluctuations. Some of my long time competitors even got wiped out completely."

Ranga: "Seeing some movements, I think now google is becoming more walled garden, so need to be a big authority to get in."

TerryCody: "30% shake, I don't care."

Dreams411: "My main site is getting roasted. Traffic is down by over 50%. The weird thing is that Semrush shows that the site is gaining more traffic, while in reality I'm loosing a shit ton of traffic. Don't know what's happening."

Here are some tweets:

@rustybrick was there a another algorithm update yesterday or today? Clients websites are going supernova. Rankings through the roof! Guess I have been doing it right all this time just had to wait for Google to catch up. 😂😂
— Robert O'Haver (@RobertOHaver) July 24, 2021

Hey @rustybrick, @JohnMu can you plz let me know is there any unconfirmed Google updates during this weekend? As our website (Finance/Insurance category) seen massive drop in ranking as well as on traffic. (India)
— Rohit Singh (@rohitsingh995) July 26, 2021