It has been a full nine days since I last reported about a Google Search ranking algorithm update and now I am seeing signs of another one starting yesterday, August 3rd through today, August 4th.
Both the chatter within the SEO industry spiked and we saw some of the third-party Google tracking tools show a spike in volatility yesterday.
Now, while we are all expecting a confirmed update soon, right now, we have not received one - yet.
We've had very heated volatility since the last confirmed update, which was the April 2023 reviews update. The last core update was the March 2023 core update. So we are due some updates, and many suspect we will see the helpful content update, which we didn't have since the December 2022 helpful content update.
Just to catch you up, we last reported about an unconfirmed Google update July 26th, July 17th/18th and then again July 12th/13th, then around July 6th or 8th and then on June 28th and 29th and then again June 23rd then on June 19th we reported about ongoing heated volatility with Google Search. We also reported on an update on June 14th, one around June 14th and ongoing, then June 6th then around May 22/23rd, then around May 17t, then on May 10th and the other around early May.
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the SEO chatter I see both at WebmasterWorld and in the comments area on this site:
After a few days of high traffic, apparently the drop will be big today.
Had a good week of good traffic like you guys and the deep started yesterday.
Lots of testing and rotation going on every day with the SERPs. Today I am -67% in USA traffic and -70% to my home page. Main landing pages are -60% one day this week and then up the next. UK traffic disappears one day, strong the next. UAE -50% the entire week.
My ranking went down, it’s a downward trend, but if I can ride of zombie traffic why not.
Search traffic is -30% today at 1:30pm. Most of that is just lower USA traffic. UAE has also been down by half for almost a week.
Completely dead across all sites for me this morning, in fact that dead I had to check my server was up and running, our hotel venue site had a 6 hour peiod with zero traffic ... Xmas Day looks posiitively busy compared to this!
Massive drop on clicks and impressions on Google search console reports of Search results, discover and Google news after 26th July onwards. This drop has been seen on desktop view while in mobile domain its has been increased. Anyone facing this issue?
Big drops for me after months of going back and updating older content and making some ground on competitors. Now been replaced with sites that haven't updated thin content pages for months, and of course, the serial link buyers.
So that is some of the chatter.
Google Tracking Tools
Here is what the tracking tools are now showing:
Some of the tools have yet to update today, so I will come back later and refresh these charts.
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
