Before going offline for this long three-day holiday, I saw rumblings of a possible Google update about to rollout. I was a bit nervous it was a core update but Google did not confirm any update and now that I am back online, the chatter, although elevated, is not at core update levels.
But there did seem to be an update that really picked up this past Sunday, around March 28th but began probably later on Friday and continued through Monday or so. Google has not confirmed any updates but both the SEO industry chatter and the automated tracking tools show fluctuations in the Google search results for this past weekend.
I should add, there is a lot of chatter around Google Discover changes as well. On Reddit and Google Webmaster Help and other places about Google Discover showing a lot more older news recently. Is this related, maybe, but hard for me to say.
Here is some of the chatter from on the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread:
Seeing some fluctuations since 24h, site heavily impacted by may2020 update, improved E-A-T one month ago. First good signal after almost one year of decline.
Friday's traffic was 105% Saturday 60% - that's really low for me Today so far 28%
lol..that last one describes what I've been seeing regarding food and recipes in Discover. Once you search anything food-related..the feed gets completely inundated with the subject. The same does not happen for other searches.
Something happened over the weekend, took another deep dive in impressions and clicks (-50%). It just doesn't stop getting worse...
Yesterday was looking very poor until the last few hours of my Googleday with a sudden influx of visitors across all sites resulting in normal Sunday numbers with my global .com at 72%.
Traffic is abnormally down since last Friday. Definitely, Google is preparing for something BIG sad
There is a lot more chatter and it is a huge mix between general ranking changes and Google Discover changes. Keep in mind, often ranking changes in core search do impact changes in Google Discover.
Here is what the automated tracking tools are showing over the past few days.
So between the normal ranking fluctuations in Google Search and the spike in complaints in Google Discover, it looks like we had a solid unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm update.
Did you notice changes over the past few days?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Reddit and Google Webmaster Help.
