There is some significant chatter in the SEO industry around a possible new years update that started late December 31, 2019 and throughout January 1, 2020. The chatter is high but similar to the Christmas update chatter, the tracking tools are not showing huge signs of an update. It leads me to believe the same as I did with the Christmas update, that I doubt there was a big update on New Years.
In short, I am seeing a lot of people either happy that their traffic and rankings are way up starting New Years eve and day or people are super sad about drops in traffic and rankings. Here is some of the chatter in the ongoing WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World forums:
Here are some screen shots from the tools, some are showing slight fluctuations around January 1st, some tools have not updated yet for the 1st:
In short, I am not confident there was an update because of the same reasons I listed around the Christmas update chatter.
(1) Googlers are probably not working to push an update or fix any issues from a push.
(2) Traffic is always different around a holidays, so looking at traffic is hard.
(3) The tracking tools do not show big changes to rankings.
In short, I think everyone should just check back in with their rankings on Monday going forward. Ignore the past couple of weeks.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
