December 4th Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update?

Chalkboard4 Google 640

Some of the tracking tools are spiking up and showing signals of a Google search ranking update over the past couple of days - maybe December 3rd or 4th. There is some limited chatter, nothing crazy, but some chatter at WebmasterWorld. Some are saying they saw significant changes to their rankings in the past couple of days but most are not talking about changes.

At this point, I suspect there was maybe a small update impacting a smaller number of sites - at best. Maybe a tremor to the November updates that occurred over the past couple of weeks. Maybe the community is all away on vacations or conferences, I am just not seeing massive chatter.

Here is some of the chatter on WebmasterWorld over the past couple of days:

I've noticed some improvements in my rankings. I think there was some update in the last day or so.

Monday and Tuesday saw organic traffic rise back up to just below average traffic - again we expect to see a dip in December.
Today is so far slow. And it really seems to me like Google are throttling traffic. I suspected this a few weeks ago.

Yesterday 3/12 I had a high (abnormal) traffic spike. Today the traffic has disappeared. Sounds like some test/update.

Wow! The traffic on one of my websites just increased by 450% a couple of days ago. Was there a Google algorithm update the first of the month? A lot of my keywords went from about #4 to #1 or 2 in the Google SERP. The first good news in 2 years. I got hit really hard in the December 2017 Google update.

I asked Glenn Gabe to look into his data and he shared this:

Also worth noting, I'm seeing movement even a few days before 12/3 for some sites. Here's a site that surged during the 11/8 update that saw more movement up on 11/30. Again, still early, but I'll be digging in more soon. But again, heads-up. :) https://t.co/5weJ0Lp92m pic.twitter.com/U7SjZZBlJL
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 5, 2019