Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update/Instability Over Weekend

Mar 8, 2021 - 7:41 am 9 by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google Search Algorithm Update

Over the weekend there are a nice amount of chatter from the SEO community around the Google search results rankings being all over the place. The chatter was unusually high for the weekend and some of the tools have also picked up on the fluctuations in the search results.

Google has not announced anything but this continues the pattern of very unstable search results over the past several weeks. We had unconfirmed Google updates on January 7th and 8th, January 12th, January 27th, February 8th, February 17th, February 20th, February 24th and 25th, February 26th and 27th, March 2nd and 3rd and then again this weekend, March 6th & 7th or so. Let's not forget the launch of passage indexing on February 10th.

Google has been unusually volatile, even more so than it normally is.

Back to March 6th and 7th, here is some of the chatter over the weekend at WebmasterWorld:

Massive drop yesterday and today remains the same trend. Someone else?

European website : -40% last three days on mobile trafic. Discover +-0 - Bye bye cruel world

It;s like Google has been "stuck" on 2 March for the last five days and not recognising any new content beyond that - whether that relates to its issue with caching or something else, it's hard to tell. But that's roughly the date where the "worst" of the latest round of "who knows what is going on" guessing game started.

Yesterday and today has seen a surge in traffic for me. +84% direct traffic, +8% searches, +40% UK, +575% AU. We shall see what the 2nd half of the day brings. Thus far, these surges have lasted about one day before traffic falls again, since this started on February 13th.

There is more but here are screen shots of the tools that track Google changes.

SEMRush:

click for full size

Cognitive SEO:

click for full size

RankRanger:

click for full size

Mozcast:

click for full size

SERPMetrics:

click for full size

Have you noticed ranking or traffic changes over the weekend?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

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