Unconfirmed Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update November 8th

Nov 11, 2019 - 8:35 am 260 by
Filed Under Google Updates

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Friday morning, November 8th, I saw a sprinkle of chatter across the industry about a Google search algorithm update. Some were claiming massive changes in traffic and rankings. But to be honest, the chatter was incredibly limited, that is until several hours later and now the chatter throughout the weekend is off the charts. By chatter, I mean the community talking about the changes in rankings and traffic from Google organic search. It is literally off the charts and I will share some of this chatter with you now.

The automated tracking tools are showing virtually no update since Friday, November 8th. Which is also weird and gets some speculation out that this is BERT related - which to be honest, makes no sense. Sorry.

In any event, this update seems to hit all niches, industries and verticals. I will add that the Black Hat forums are extremely active with chatter, but so is the more white hat forums. So this is all over the place right now.

Let's start with WebmasterWorld, here are some of the comments:

Entertainment industry here, i see lot of movement on my end, lot of sites losing their ranking heavily and couple hours later everything gets back to where they were. This weekend should be very interesting imo wink

I hate to say this but something seems not right for a Friday trend . 8th November may be ? BERT was good for us and things coincide with Bills prediction about the possible roll back .

I also lost a lot of traffic since last night. I also saw a drop in keyword ranking on my pages. I'm not sure if this has something to do with my site not yet secured (https) but I've been through years without my site migrating to https and my ranking is good. @pokwerpok and @browndog are your sites already https?

Yep something is going on, got hit yesterday. -16% down comapred to last week....

Yes, here too. Main 2 sites, different niches, different geos, have been slightly loosing traffic for the last 2 weeks. But yesterday one was 25% down vs same day last week and the other 15%. Today it seems it's going to be worst.

We where doing well when the BERT algorithm rolled out, however we can hit by something yesterday. Lost 50% of our traffic overnight.

I concur...the week started out ok' but the bottom fell out yesterday. Seeing a lot of churn in the SERPs. Really looks like a rollback to a few weeks ago for my niche. It's a mess.

We saw an increase of 24% with G organic yesterday vs. the average of the last 8 Fridays. We'll see if it holds through the weekend and into next week.

Down by 22% from this time last week. I need to find a way to get out of my subscriptions and shut down the site. It breaks my heart, I love it, but it's no longer viable.

Improved SERP positions but traffic down by 24%.

There is a ton more there but you can visit those forums to see more.

Here are two different threads from the Black Hat World Forums - I am including select quotes but it does seem there is more activity in these forums:

yes, my website dropped, 40% omg I hate them

Lost about 40% of my traffic. This sucks!

Lost 30-40% of my traffic on My health site with White-hat SEO only

Yeah, I have. Been dancing for a few days, let's see where it stops.

-30% on my website

Down around 30%. Many high volume keywords have dropped while long tails have largely remained stable.

up 30% yesterday and today

Mine dropped 25%.

I’m experiencing decrease too, like 20-30% in last few days.

Again, there is a lot more chatter but I cannot copy and paste it all here.

Let me include a bunch of posts on Twitter as well:

Now, like I said, the tools are pretty much not showing anything as a whole:

Mozcast:

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SERP Metrics:

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Algoroo:

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Advanced Web Rankings:

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Accuranker:

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RankRanger:

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Cognitive SEO:

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SEMRush:

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One More Thing... This Bill Lambert character on November 1st posted in the comments on this site saying "They want to do a rollback on Nov. 8." This was related to BERT and maybe how it impacted the NY Times? But again, with the BERT release, I didn't see this much chatter about an update at all - the chatter was small if any.

What are you seeing? This update seems very weird and again, Google has not confirmed it yet.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World Forums.

Update: Google somewhat confirmed it by saying they did several updates:

 

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