There are a nice number of SEOs and webmasters in the forums claiming they saw huge changes in terms of their rankings in Google starting on November 22nd or so. Since it was Thanksgiving day and traffic is always off on holidays, I wanted to wait it out. But there are many claims of an update, possibly a reversal of the Medic Update for some that were originally hit on August 1st.
Here is some of the chatter from both WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World around the changes in the Google search results:
next very big hit this night. Serps are upside down and not for the best ( yes for the best for google ads but not for users ) In our niche it seems that all the sites that has been hit by penguin are back.
Traffic off a cliff but rankings seem to be holding steady. Most Americans are no begrudgingly eating Turkey with families so I'm not going to worry until next week.
we saw spike in traffic at 5pm EST yesterday (+>100% of same day last week) after which traffic continued at about +20% from pre-spike traffic levels. Overall the day ended down 4% (as compared to same day last week). But it is Thanksgiving, so 4% down is like 20% up. But it is Thanksgiving, and traffic patterns are bound to be unusual. Conclusion, we'll have to wait and see, things looks normal so far today but it's early morning still.
after a drop in traffic Wed through to Sat I saw a return to normal levels yesterday - as expected must have been an effect of thanksgiving , black friday etc and many are back to work they are wasting company time by internet browsing again (thankfully)
Health niche here Seeing a huge ROLLBACK of 1st August. Most of the dropped keywords are going up again since yesterday, but mostly today. Gained plus 30-40 contemporary users in anaytics real-time statistics.
Getting huge re-gains here. it's like a "recovery update" for me lol
Same here. Back to pre-August figures. Even better.
I Noticed some fluctuations on Thursday 22 November noon. And I have to say since Friday I am 50% up in organic traffic to my pre-August SERPs and much better. Got hammered down by the medic update and it feels indeed like a recovery.I see nowhere else talking about it. We 've made a ton of changes since August both technical and quality (EAT). Could this be a reward update only for few? Did you make any changes the past months?
Most of the tracking tools show no real fluctuations around Thanksgiving, which also implies that it was just a slow down in holiday traffic. But it is also a time when online shopping is huge, so who knows.
Accuranker showed changes:
The rest were pretty calm and not showing much in terms of changes with Google.
So what happened? Was there an algorithm update? Was it just normal slow holiday traffic? I think it was a combination of all of this. I suspect some sites can possibly see recoveries to previous updates. But also the holiday days really makes it hard for me to measure the chatter in the forums.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
Update: Ill add some tweets from people who saw changes:
Google updates that happen over a holiday weekend can be tricky to interpret. But, we're seeing changes in a bunch of sites that I do not think are seasonal. Looks like either a tweak to Aug 1 (Medic), or some sites are seeing improvements dt changes made. pic.twitter.com/k8MedtYEJZ
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 26, 2018
@rustybrick On 22 November we fully recovered from Medic update. There are 3-4 guys in black hat forum also claiming recovery but I see no buzz going on. Was there an update? I am trying to figure out if it was our fixes or an update. https://t.co/HyPx9py7ZS
— Christos Man (@Chris_managoudi) November 26, 2018
Seeing the same thing - competitor who lost majority of traffic is regaining traffic (site in Netherlands - health ) pic.twitter.com/TkppPweMLB
— Dirk Ceuppens (@dirk_ceuppens) November 26, 2018
