So last Monday, we reported about a Google search ranking algorithm update that touched down on May 16th – the 6 month or so anniversary of the last confirmed Google broad core update. Well, that unconfirmed Google update continued on throughout the rest of the week through today, I updated that story a bit to reflect that.
That story now has over 150 comments with complaints about the ongoing tremors and instability of the search rankings in Google Search. The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread, despite the site going through a migration and having some connectivity issues, also has a lot of chatter throughout the week.
Honestly, whatever was pushed out last Monday, May 16th, certainly felt like a broad core update. But of course, it was not a broad core update – Google would have confirmed if it pushed out a broad core update – right? We are due, very due, a broad core update from Google. The last broad core update we had was on November 17, 2021 – which was 6 months and one week ago. We expect these broad core updates every 3-6 months and today is the 6 month mark.
There is a higher than normal number of complaints from affiliate sites or sites that do reviews about ranking drops. But again, hard to say if this is just impacting affiliate sites, I highly doubt it. Maybe this was a big tweak to the product reviews update?
As a reminder, we had many more core-like unconfirmed updates including that May 16th and ongoing update and the Mother’s Day update, the May 1st update, April 20 and 21st update, April 18th update, April 13th and 14th and another update on March 18th both did not get confirmed by Google. Also one on March 11th and March 4th and so on. The last confirmed update was March 2022 Product Reviews Update and that ended on April 11th.
SEO Chatter
He is the recent (past day or so) chatter I am seeing in the WebmasterWorld forums over the past 24-hours or so:
Also, the comments on this site, in the May 16th post, are off the charts – so scan through those.
Google Tracking Tools
The tracking tools, all of them, are showing spikes throughout May 16th through this week. Some tools picked it up more than others and some are showing a bigger lift today. Here are screenshots from those tools:
Mozcast – also is calm:
So while this may not be a broad core update – there were some signs of a Google update that felt like a broad core update rollout.
Did you notice a lot of volatility the past week and maybe something up-ticking today?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: Google’s John Mueller gives a comment of sorts on the weirdness we have been seeing a lot of this month. He said, “I’m not aware of anything specific. We always work to improve the quality & relevance of the search results, so it can happen that a site becomes more – or less – visible over time.”
