As of yesterday afternoon and certainly today, I am seeing signs of some really large Google search ranking volatility and ranking changes. The question is, are these fluctuations from the tail-end of the March 2022 product reviews update or is this some sort of new update?
I am seeing significant and some off the charts volatility and fluctuations being reported by the tracking tools. Some are literally as high as they can go. I am also seeing a spike in chatter from within the SEO communities and forums.
Google Product Reviews Update Related?
As a reminder, the March 2022 product reviews update kicked off on March 23rd, it was quiet for some time, we saw small tremors that day but it really spiked on March 31st. Then it went quiet again and I thought it was pretty much done. I even posted my big Google update data review on Search Engine Land. Because by two weeks out, normally with these updates, we don't see too much change this late in the game.
So is this related to the product reviews update? Possibly. I did ask Alan Kent from Google for an update last night, but he did not reply. Instead, Lily Ray published a chart of her own, showing for one site she is tracking, that it looks like we are still seeing big changes, as recent as yesterday:
doesn't seem like it 😛 pic.twitter.com/uGogh6Z6p0
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 5, 2022
I asked Glenn Gabe to share some charts this morning as well and yea, similar:
Seeing late volatility with some sites impacted by the March 2022 Product Reviews Update. Most of that movement is in the same direction (surges continuing or drops dropping more). Maybe the tail end of the PRU... Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/9PmpUQB0co
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 6, 2022
SEO Chatter
So what kind of chatter am I seeing within the SEO community. I can share the public WebmasterWorld forums, where the chatter normally precedes the tracking tools and here is some of that chatter:
Traffic improved over the weekend, but UK traffic was way off on Sunday. Today traffic started normally but simply fell off a cliff at 11am sharp and has been very low all day. My home page is -54% today. USA -14%, Canada - 49%, Australia -63%. Referral traffic and social media traffic has been down for almost two weeks as well.
Google has started bloating my websites. The traffic spiked very high for the last few days, but I am not celebrating because I have seen it in 2020. The same pattern. High rise of traffic followed by complete crash about a month later for at least a year. And it also happened in April 2020. Anyone seeing something similar.
Anyone else getting weird numbers in GA realtime today? (Metric total looks right, but 'right now' is lower than it should be)
Same here, the realtime stats of active users is def not working correctly at the moment. Started this morning around 07:00 AM (CEST).
Huge drop today. US semrush sensor on fire. Here we go again :|
There is some kind of update going on, but I've found something that I always see which makes me wonder where it comes from. Both Google and Bing seem to be running in tandem. In other words, the behavior on search is the same. How is that possible? Two separate companies but they seem to share in the same type of changes at the same time. It's something I've never understood. It's against the law to collude, price fix or anything like that, so why does this happen every time there is a major update?
So the chatter seems to just be kicking off now, but it is hard to know when Google Analytics may have had some delays?
Tracking Tools
If you look at the tracking tools, some are literally off the charts. Some are showing massive spikes in volatility and Google ranking fluctuations. Here are screenshots and I may update some of these throughout the day, as some tend to update later in the day.
So what do you all think? It seems to me like it might be the tail-end of this Google product reviews update based on Google not yet telling us this update is complete, based on Lily Ray's chart and based on all the recent volatility. But you tell me, look at your analytics and tools and let me know in the comments.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
