Google Search Ranking Algorithm Volatility Sunday, October 1st?
I am seeing some early signs of an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update, maybe some small shifts, starting Sunday, October 1st. Only a couple of the tools showed volatility yesterday but there is renewed chatter within the SEO forums as of yesterday.
As a reminder, the Google September 2023 helpful content update just finished rolling out on Septmeber 28th - and that update was a big one.
Again, I am seeing some early chatter but I wanted to cover it. I will keep an eye on the chatter throughout the day but right now, here is the chatter I see both at WebmasterWorld and some of the comments here:
Massive drops across whole swaths of semantically related terms today. I just checked and many of my main landing pages are down 25%-70%...huge drops for every variation of the terms. Meanwhile I have not lost any rank at all, and in fact am ranking higher on some of them. Even terms with #1 ranking have lost the traffic this entire week. Not one new conversion for 8 days now. This looks like a repeat of the tactics Google used in 2022...all the quality traffic just vanishes, and is replaced by sudden surges of traffic, traffic to obscure low-level pages, and visitors which do not convert at all.
Yesterday I had the biggest drop in traffic in the history of my main website.
20% increase in organic traffic yesterday, seems to be holding today.
In my vertical it looks like a big boost to .edu domains.
Once again Traffic and Conversions have stopped since Midday.
This update as either not stopped or a new one is inbound.
It would appear that the HCU update is still going on. Results are still crazy volatile. I'm not talking about changes in a few positions but a few pages, depending on the hour of day you search. So they announced the end of the update just for show or to keep a deadline but its not over. If HCU did end then there is a continuation of something very similar. The results for many terms look broken, meaning there are just too many sites ranking that seem so out of place, like spammy .de and .pl throwaway blogs ranking for the same exact terms with AI content in US Google.
If I understand correctly, there is a massive fluctuation in US right? Hopefully its a sign of improvement...
Got some #1 places back today that dropped during the core update. So maybe something is happening.
Traffic is insanely slow today. Like waiting for grass to grow. Is this still the aftereffects of the HCU or is there another "algorithm update" going on?
Sunday was my lowest earning day in three years. My traffic is 70% down.
A further -15% ever since Friday here. My Semrush and Ahrefs dashboards show an additional plummet in keywords/rankings.
The ride never ends, huh.
Same here — today has been dire so far. Sunday is typically the lowest day of the week at about 60% compared to a weekday. Yesterday was much worse than I would normally expect, yet it was still better than the first half of today by 3 to 1.
It's getting weird. Real weird.
For example, page A was getting leads and affiliate sales last week.
But suddenly, this week there's no leads or sales from that page. Now page B is getting some leads and affiliate sales. Page A suddenly becomes "dead".
It's no longer "traffic throttling" but "traffic rationing" as someone mentioned before.
since 2 hours we are facing a 80% drop. Yesterday traffic was very high. Lots of conversions. Unusual for a sunday. especially with the sunny weather yesterday.
Google Search Rank Tracking Tools
Here is what the Google tracking tools are showing now, most are calm yesterday. But keep in mind, some have not updated yesterday's numbers yet:
Barry @rustybrick is reporting a possible new ranking update over the past few days. We're seeing increased volatility since last Wednesday with a new spike yesterday in our millions of US keywords @seoClarity https://t.co/Z3RZYm1t2Q pic.twitter.com/gjKfXzPPF1
— Mark Traphagen 🏳️🌈 (they/them) (@marktraphagen) October 2, 2023
I know it is early but have you seen anything over the past twenty-four hours?
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