Seems like since Friday and throughout the weekend there may have been some update pushed out by Google to its search ranking algorithm. There is chatter and there are third-party tracking tools that seem to suggest there was some sort of update. Google has not confirmed any Google algorithm update from this weekend, so this would be Google updating as normal to them.
Again, I first started seeing chatter on July 31st, Friday, late morning, New York time. Here is some of the chatter from WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World followed by some social media chatter:
Seeing some negative traffic impact today. About 15-20% . Do you see anything similar within your stats?
it's really up and down with huge shifts the last 5 days !
There's shuffling going on in the SERPS for my industry now, so let us hope the Pinterest problem gets resolved once this update bakes in. But the low traffic and lack of conversions is very frustrating to say the least.
I'm seeing the same thing...traffic died from Thursday 30th around 1pm, then Friday 31st and so far Sat 1st is even worse. I am only seeing minor fluctuations in ranking and have gained ten top ten spots for more long tail searches that bring in little traffic and lost one top three spot in that time.
The last few days, Organic traffic is going x2 and after /2 everyday :D
Well whatever it was in the past few days seems to be reverting back today.
Very odd rotation in traffic on a day to day basis now. Yesterday a 25+% drop in USA traffic, today up 25%. UK traffic was up 38% yesterday, today down 45%. Yesterday an 80% drop in traffic from Australia, and today not one visitor from Australia. Australia has been one of my top referrers for the last 17 years, so extremely suspect.
For those seeing weird traffic the past few days, I'm seeing the same thing. Massive influxes of zombie-like traffic, then nothing. Its so strange how this happens periodically.
Began noticing some volatility in the SERPs early Sunday. There also appears to be subsequent chatter regarding the same. Maybe some early testing & dancing as we're due for a broad core update pretty soon? cc: @rustybrick
— Vlad Rappoport (@vladrpt) August 3, 2020
31st July - Algorithm update on e-commerce retail. This is a significant drop in ranking but recovering ... @rustybrick @searchliaison @googlewmc #SEO pic.twitter.com/MfSrOIqWrE
— Amine Dahimene (@aminedahimene) August 3, 2020
Here are screen shots from some of the tools, notice the spikes over the weekend.
SEMRush - notice July 31st and now back up this morning:
Cognitive SEO - July 31st and August 1st:
RankRanger - same with July 31st and August 1st:
Advanced Web Rankings shows it on August 1st:
Algoroo shows it on July 31st:
SERPMetrics on July 31st:
Mozcast shows it on the 30th, which is normal based on how they report things based on their time zone:
Did you notice ranking changes since Friday and through the weekend?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
