Once again we are faced with an unconfirmed Google algorithm update. Tools and industry chatter are off the charts, referencing websites whose traffic and rankings have tanked.
This usually points to a significant algorithm update, even though the big G is not talkin’.
These are what the SEO pros over at WebmasterWorld.com are saying:
@ichthyous – It was as I expected. After two days with very high traffic and excellent conversions, the huge drop comes today. On my side, not only on the home page, but on the whole site.
That’s what I said before, this was expected 😐
Based on today I can see that some of my top competitors in my niche were severely punched down. My suspicion is that it may be related to the core web vitals, neither of them pass. It is only a guess. Usually after semrush shows high volatility it hits me the following day so I really hope nothing major will happen.
“But the signs of decline are evident. Just look at the SERPs.”
Evident for us. The general public seems to either not care or even like it. Until the moment the general public is fine with this (and even likes it) we can expect much more of it.
Like many here, I had to have an internal chuckle at the “Google doesn’t suspend sites from Discover” thread that’s doing the rounds. Of course they don’t. They just break stuff and then ignore reports with evidence that something is wrong and contradict their own content policies.
I feel sorry for webmasters who seemingly haven’t realised yet that something with that feed is borked ever since March.
Well… if they stop indexing articles in Discover then it is equal to suspension or shadow ban.
I am getting hard to explain spikes in traffic from France, Germany and Spain recently. Upon closer inspection it’s multiple (10-12) hits to the same page from IPs all over France (and the Island of Reunion!), or multiple hits to another page from IPs all over Germany, same thing from Spain, etc. The hits are spread out over half a day, but it’s still not normal to get that many visits to one page from one country. Some of the hits are coming from images.google.fr, others from google search. Is anyone else seeing this odd behavior? This is causing traffic spikes to interior pages on my site for days now, while my home page is -30%+.
Anyone noticing any shifts? Not seen much movement on our sites, but I am in the process of doing some database housekeeping on some sites – so need to sometimes just cross-reference with a google search for some tables….and yet….despite quite obviously being very very very interested in WordPress……the search results have utterly abysmal for some of the most basic queries….so thought I’d ask if anyone is being hammered.
I’m seeing some very odd patterns…for one search that I rank #1 on for years it showed a google account login page at #1 yesterday (gone today). For another term that I was in the top five for a couple of years, and which I lost completely after the March update, I jumped back to #1 yesterday, and then dropped to 83 today. In the old days that might indicate a penalty of some sort on my site, but these days not so sure.
On top of that there are bizarre surges in traffic from a different European country almost every day…today it was a big surge from Google Netherlands. Also, my home page traffic was down 35-45% from the 26th-29th and today snapped back to normal.
Finally, today my traffic dropped off a cliff at 9am and is still lower.
Okay, What Happened with the Google Algorithm Update?
Again, Google has yet to confirm this one. We always like to see confirmation from Google, but that isn’t always the case.
We have multiple sources and tools confirming today’s algorithm update, so there is that at least.
The story is the same: keep on keeping on, and we’ll continue to report as always.
