I often use a mix of the SEO weather tools and the SEO community chatter to determine if something is big is happening with a Google Update or not. There are times where the community chatter will be high and the tools will not fluctuate much and vice versa, but when both are showing fluctuations, I feel more confidence in my estimation on if I should do a blog post or not on the topic. Truth is, I’ve been covering Google updates well before these tools were out there, since 2003, all based on the SEO community chatter – and I strongly believe that is the best metric to measure these updates on a wider scale.
Google has been dropping hints that these tools are not always correct.
John Mueller said in a Google+ hangout last week, that he feels the SEO weather tools are “tracking things in a different way” than how Google would. He said this at the 4:40 minute mark into the video:
So I asked Gary Illyes from Google straight out about this on Twitter, “@methode do you think some of the SEO weather tools out there pick up on the wrong things?” and he responded “yes.”
Here is the video embed at the start time of John’s comment:
I asked RankRanger, one of the SEO weather tracking tools for a comment on this and their spokesperson told me:
Algoroo also responded saying:
Here is a quote from Accuranker:
And here is Dr. Pete from Moz’s thoughts on this.
