This weekend saw even more of an increase in the weather tools that measure for Google Algorithm updates.
While some reporting suggests that there was only a local update, this update was huge. Much larger than normal.
It was starting to appear out of the ordinary when we reported it on Friday, April 30. However, on Saturday May 1, the increase went over the top.
There is some speculation that it could include both local and product reviews updates.
Here is more chatter on WebmasterWorld.com:
Here we go again ,
Something started brewing yesterday.
Here we go again…it took about 6 months to fall right back into the punitive sandbox Gorg started on May 10th 2010. No doubt encouraged to cheat webmasters out of revenue by their new partners in Washington who turn a blind eye to any of their corrupt practices. Site income has dropped by 80% in the past week.
I am in the same boat as you but I am gradually beginning to recover. It’s a very slow process.
Did anyone notice a big drop this afternoon?
@Samsam1978, I am beginning to think they added a new AI that is more sophisticated than the others. Something was reset at December core update and the AI is learning it all from scratch This is a pure guess and might explain why I am receiving old errors that were fixed in 2017, 2018 and 2020.
Do what you can to keep your head above the water. I worked on backlinks and it seemed to have worked but I can’t really tell if this is the only thing. I can tell almost for sure that is not about content quality so I am not relying on it anymore.
@yollo03 – Good advice I might have to invest time in backlinking now. Have not bothered before as the quality of the content was always enough. I have seen lot’s of poorly written competitor sites ranking so it might be time to do some backlinking now. Any tips? Thanks.
It’s mostly business as usual for our editorial travel site. Rankings have been edging up lately for our popular evergreen pages, but that bit of luck may be cancelled out by the increased amount of visual clutter above the conventional search results on Google’s SERPs.
Traffic has been rising slowly but steadily as more people have received COVID-19 vaccinations and are looking forward to trips later in the year or in 2022. We did have a spike of about 15,000 percent on one of our evergreen article pages yesterday (and for most of today), presumably because the topic was featured on a megasite and people rushed to Google.
Terrible start to the month so far – and weekends are usually the best days for traffic for us.
Saw a minor improvement in the last few days of April, but now back to constantly wondering whether the site has gone into a permanent downtime. Awful.
Terrible start (traffic and earnings).
Glenn Gabe wrote the following regarding these updates:
What Exactly is This Google Algorithm Update Really Doing?
As we continue to cover these updates, one thing really sticks out to us is that this update was significantly bigger than what’s considered typical.
While there was speculation that some of it could have been local SEO-related, SEO pros are saying that there has been little to no impact from a local SEO perspective.
The true purpose of the update remains shrouded in mystery.
Will we ever know? Unless the big G comes back with a definitive confirmation of the update happening, we most likely won’t. But we will continue to report on any developments and bring you the news on this update as quickly as possible.
