I am seeing signs of another unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update, this one kicking off on May 22nd and continuing over the next few days. This one is unusual in that I see significant chatter amongst the SEO community, but some of the more popular Google rank-checking tools are not picking up on it.
As a reminder, we had reported on three previous unconfirmed Google Search ranking updates; one around May 17t, then on May 10th and the other around early May.
This new one has a lot of SEOs talking but the tools are pretty mild.
SEO Chatter
Let's start with what the SEOs are saying. Most of the chatter is in either WebmasterWorld and in the comments are over here.
Here are some quotes:
Drop continuing, nothing helps. Just can't do anything like watching they are destroying all I was doing for more than 10 years. Insanity.
US traffic is dead today. Like almost nothing… Pretty much same as you @ichthyous They must prepare something big again.
Here we go again...USA traffic is starting the morning at -74%. Search is -30%, direct -34%, home page -53%. Traffic in general is just at a new lower level from any place that counts. Meanwhile, plenty of traffic from Botswana!
Went on YouTube to check some metrics of the videos I carelessly put online since years, and to put a new one with better tags and quality. And I see that my views are increasing since a few days. So probably more videos are pushed in the SERP making everything going low.
After a very low traffic weekend, at 05.00 UK time this morning traffic returned to normal levels and has remained there all day ... for the moment!
Yes, huge impact on our niche - 30%
Basically I see big drops in traffic a few days before the rest of the people (here too) report the same problems.
I confirm you, today's traffic of my site shows same pattern...
My traffic started coming back 2 days ago. So yes, something is running again.
it is getting worse every day. google is targeting our best sites down to zero. What left is traffic to shelf warmer items. Clearly google is on the way to kill all organic traffic to items that are included in their shopping ad system/
USA (and Canada) traffic continues to be abysmal...today starting -42% at 10am. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is fairly strong:
So there is a lot of chatter about a possible Google ranking update.
Google Tracking Tools
Here is what the tools are showing and Mozcast, Algoroo and SERPstat might be one of the few picking it up.
Have any of you seen any big ranking changes in the past few days or so?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
