So we've been covering the Google Maccabees updates for some time, did an analysis of it and Google somewhat confirmed there were many minor updates in that time frame. One of those updates may have hit many celebrity web sites.
Glenn Gabe posted on his blog some shocking charts that shows many celebrities official web sites took a nose dive with these updates. Celebrities such as Tom Cruse, John Lennon, Lebron James, Kristen Stewart, and Charlie Sheen all saw significant drops in their web site rankings in Google.
Glenn wrote, "I noticed that some celebrities aren’t ranking anymore for their own names. Their websites used to rank number one in the search results as of early December, but those sites are now either at the bottom of page one or even off of page one."
Danny Sullivan, now at Google, responded to what Glenn spotted and said he will look into it:
Thanks saw your earlier post will pass it on.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 27, 2017
Here are some of the ranking charts showing the drop for the stars:
John Lennon:
Kristen Stewart:
Charlie Sheen:
Lebron James:
Tom Cruise:
Glenn showed a lot more detail on his blog but this is clearly something that makes you and I scratch our heads. How is it "minor" if such big web sites and personalities saw such a big hit?
Who knows, maybe Google will follow up or just revert something and we will notice the web sites start to rank again?
Forum discussion at Twitter.