While I was offline, it seems we had two bouts of Google Search ranking volatility, one starting around Wednesday, October 23rd and 24th, and then again in the past 24 hours, starting on October 26th and 27th. I mean, this is a lot of the same as my previous Google Search ranking algorithm update coverage.
Again, I am seeing new intense chatter from the SEO community about big ranking changes in the past 24 hours and also from when I went offline on the 23rd and 24th of October.
As a reminder, we covered October 19th and 20th volatility and then on October 15th, October 10th and then before that on October 2nd which lasted a couple of days. The Google August 2024 core update started on August 15th and officially completed on September 3rd. But it was still super volatile the day after it completed and also weeks after it completed and it has not cooled.
We saw big signals on and around September 6th, September 10th or so and maybe around September 14th. We also saw movement around September 18th, last weekend and Septmeber 25th and September 28th or so.
Here is what I am seeing now.
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the chatter in the past 24 hours from both WebmasterWorld and over here:
Google shut down organic traffic completely today in Brazil. The Semrush sensor is normal(8,9), but the traffic is stopped.
Wow, traffic just died today. It’s like my traffic went on a weekend break too.
The worst thing is close to Christmas, it’s as if my website doesn’t even exist.
Why my category pages with little to no data getting indexed and appearing on first page while pages with content are no where to be found? This new update has totally messed up SERPs. Anyone else observing this behavior?
My “informational” site seems to be holding steady rank and traffic wise but seeing competitors drop from page one to 3 then back again to original position a few hours later, its like total flux and nothing I have ever seen, constant movement for months now, hour by hour…. What are they doing?
There is more but here is some of the chatter from Wednesday and Thursday:
Really low traffic today, according to GA.
Update today? Huge drop over here!
Does anyone understand the current chaos? Despite a good ranking, my traffic has dropped drastically since Friday and every day it gets less. The same applies to a number of other website owners I’ve spoken to in the last few days. Especially considering that Google traffic has increased dramatically since August. In the shop the same: until Friday, sales were good, now it’s just zombie traffic again.
Huge swings today again, yesterday it looked like they did a roll back to around March…. now the past few hours it looks like a roll back of a rollback. I think this is the new norm and another money grab by G to have organics in a constant state of flux to prevent any company/site having any sort of stability if not using ads?!
Drop today confirmed since yesterday.
Sheeesh. @rustybrick I’m seeing HUGE movement in last 24 hours, both gains and losses (naturally).
— Taylor Kurtz (@RealTaylorKurtz) October 24, 2024
Yep, lots of volatility. For example, here’s a site heavily impacted by the September helpful content update (HCUX) that surged with the August core update, then dropped when a number of other HCUX sites dropped back down AFTER the August core update completed, but now surged… https://t.co/kBavOmX586 pic.twitter.com/f6O8S7YtuO
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 27, 2024
Google Tracking Tools
The tracking tools seem at their normal high levels, with nothing really jumping out as massive. So, it is a bit unusual not to see the spike in chatter along with the spike with the tools. Here is what they show:
SERPmetrics (not updated in a week or so):
So what are you all seeing?
I am covering this with a rare Sunday story as I catch up on other stories throughout the week.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.