Over the past few days, the fluctuations and volatility seen in the Google organic search results seem very unusual. Searcher behavior is probably changing and maybe with that, the search results are changing for many categories. So maybe this is the new normal? There is chatter but the tracking tools are showing very unusual patterns.
Here is some of the conversation at WebmasterWorld:
I have Tech site (programming tutorials) and seeing the same trends. Last weekend traffic was up around 15% and this weekend even further (weekend traffic better than before pandemic days). However, weekdays traffic remained less than prior to pandemic days (around -20%).IMO, the traffic is up during weekends as mentally there is less distinction between weekdays and weekends as people started working from home. I see it less or not related to Google SERPs change but people's behavior.
But even my weekday traffic has been showing signs of improvement. For example, traffic last Thursday was down 13% compared to the start of the month (pre-pandemic). But the week before, it was down 24%. So things do seem to be improving, at least in the education niche.
Saw a HUGE spike in crawling stats in GSC on 3/26 & 3/27. Biggest spike since 1/10/2020 (at least on our end). Is anyone seeing something similar with heir crawl stats?
Yes indeed and we are already affected since last friday . Massive crawling and ranking fluctuations have some correlations among them although google kind of denies it which is obvious.
Agreed. Seeing flux today as well which is being picked up in SERP trackers.Amazon appears to be cemented at the top of Google's SERPs, often with estimated delivery days of 5-30 days on many products. To Google, small businesses don't exist unless in ads.
And the tools are going a bit haywire.
SERP Metrics is literally off the charts:
Yep, looks like March 23. Sites that surged on March 2 reversed. There are some companies I'm helping, or have helped in the past, that saw that weird surge (which could have been based on the change in query demand due to the global pandemic). https://t.co/dMgeDBxCmJ
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 30, 2020
It feels like every week I am now reporting on a Google search ranking update - so I apologize. But things in general seem very unstable.
I hope you are all managing okay!
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
