I am starting to see a bit of chatter around the SEO industry about a possible Google algorithm and ranking update. The chatter is somewhat limited, definitely not at the levels of an old fashion Panda or Penguin update, also not at the levels of Fred or Maccabees but still, some chatter is going on about SEOs and webmasters complaining about ranking drops.
Overall, if I had to rate the level of chatter or intensity of those SEOs noticing this, I'd rate it a 4 out of 10. Panda or Penguin would be a 9 out of 10, Fred would be a 7 out of 10 and Maccabees would be a 6 out of 10. This is based on seeing more than average complaints on Twitter, social media, the Google official forums and WebmasterWorld but still not at the levels of a larger update.
I am thinking whatever this was started around Tuesday, February 20th. The last time we reported on a possible Google update was about a month ago.
Here are some comments on WebmasterWorld.
One client site that was seeing 1k traffic per day has jumped to 5k/day in the past three days. Today at 7 am it's at over 2500 already. No site changes whatsoever in 6 months.No matching uptick in lead conversions. Probably bots. At least the shiny numbers make the client happy.
Anyone seeing an improvement in traffic today over last week? It seems like things have improved for me but it's still too early to know for sure. Looking promising at least.
Anyone else seeing big changes today?really quite significant changes in my sector.... UK, Automotive.
yes, big changes for the worse, GER
Of course, some of these can be related to internal technology issues or bugs or analytics issues. It can also be related to seasonality around Olympics, weather or something else.
The tools themselves do show changes as well around this time.
Also Moz confirmed their data is right:
Yesterday's data on our end is verified now, in that it isn't a glitch. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) February 22, 2018
Have you noticed big changes in your rankings or Google referral traffic this week? If so, let us know.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
