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I know we just reported yesterday about a potential Google update on December 10th but now I am seeing some early chatter, supported by some of the automated rank checking tools, that there is an update going on at Google as of this morning.
I know Google told us Penguin isn't happening in 2015 and that means Panda and other search quality ranking changes are likely not happening either. But Google is constantly updating their core search algorithms, even now, so maybe there was something that was rolled out last night?
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has some international SEOs taking notice. A German SEO said "Something big is going through. Traffic is down by 80% since this morning, conversions are down to 20%. Bounce is near 100%. Serps are full of lousy, contentless and very bad sites with many ads overt the fold an on the sitebar." That SEO is from Germany and runs e-commerce sites there.
Another SEO said. "I am seeing a substantial increase in traffic. But the majority of this traffic comes from markets we do not serve: Bahrain, Netherlands, UK, etc. Since we do not ship to these countries, the increase in traffic is useless and if it sticks may cause unwanted product information requests from people that we don't sell to."
Many of the automated rank checking tools have yet to update for the 16th yet, but Algoroo and RankRanger are the only two that have, thus far, and they both show higher than normal Google activity today.
Did you notice any ranking or traffic changes as of this morning?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
