There is currently both a lot of chatter in the SEO forums and many of the tools are lighting up around major changes in the Google search results. It is rare for there to be this must chatter this late in December in any of the forums, so when the WebmasterWorld thread started to get busy late December 13th through December 14th, it was something that caught my attention.

It seems like the update touched down on Tuesday, December 12, 2017.

In addition, many, but not all, of the tools are showing big swings in the Google search results. When you have both signals, SEO chatter and tools, start lighting up, it is a good sign something major changed in the core ranking algorithm with Google search.

Here are some of the comments from the thread:

There is a lot more chatter in the WebmasterWorld thread than what I shared above.

Here are the tools:

Mozcast:

SEMRush:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPMetrics:

Accuranker:

RankRanger:

Algoroo:

CognitiveSEO:

So check your analytics, see if your Google traffic changed significantly around December 12th or 13th. Check your Google Search Analytics in Google Search Console, it should have data through the 13th. And check your keywords to see if anything changed there.

There does seem to be a big Google ranking update – let’s call it the Google Maccabees update since it happened during the holiday of Chanukah? For more on the the Maccabees, check out Wikipedia, it makes for a good name for a Google update. 🙂

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: If you were hit by this update, please take our survey over here.

Update 12/20: Here is my analysis post on this update.

Update at 2pm EST 12/20: Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that there were some updates aroujnd this time. The statment Google sent was “we released several minor improvements during this timeframe, part of our regular and routine efforts to improve relevancy.”