I am starting to see a bit of chatter around the SEO industry about a possible Google algorithm and ranking update. The chatter is somewhat limited, definitely not at the levels of an old fashion Panda or Penguin update, also not at the levels of Fred or Maccabees but still, some chatter is going on about SEOs and webmasters complaining about ranking drops.
Overall, if I had to rate the level of chatter or intensity of those SEOs noticing this, I’d rate it a 4 out of 10. Panda or Penguin would be a 9 out of 10, Fred would be a 7 out of 10 and Maccabees would be a 6 out of 10. This is based on seeing more than average complaints on Twitter, social media, the Google official forums and WebmasterWorld but still not at the levels of a larger update.
I am thinking whatever this was started around Tuesday, February 20th. The last time we reported on a possible Google update was about a month ago.
Here are some comments on WebmasterWorld.
Of course, some of these can be related to internal technology issues or bugs or analytics issues. It can also be related to seasonality around Olympics, weather or something else.
The tools themselves do show changes as well around this time.
Also Moz confirmed their data is right:
Have you noticed big changes in your rankings or Google referral traffic this week? If so, let us know.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
