Over the past week or so, the search tracking tools have been showing a lot fluctuations, volatility and instability. We know Google has had a number of bugs that it is still actually working on resolving. All of that can cause volatility in the search results but is it just that?
Here is a summary of some of the issues in the past month or so with Google Search canonicalization, mobile-indexing, news-indexing, top stories carousel, and sports scores breaking.
Now, the big issues are mostly with the canonicalization and mobile-indexing issues. Google has given us a number of updates on this issue.
Again, the mobile-indexing issue impacted 0.2% of Google’s index and the canonicalization issue impacted 0.02% of Google’s index.
They both kind of spiked the third week of September:
Google posted these three updates on it being resolved:
While the mobile-indexing bug is pretty much resolved as of last Friday, October 9th. The canonicalization bug is still not resolved.
There has been chatter in the various SEO forums about fluctuations, volatility and instability in the search results. All may lead back to these bugs with Google but could they also be related to other ranking updates? It is hard to say.
Here is some of the more recent chatter at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World:
Let me now share screen shots of the tracking tools over the past couple of weeks or so:
Heck, even the local SEO trackers are showing major changes at BrightLocal:
My gut says there have not been any big Google algorithm updates during this time. But it is impossible for me to know for sure without Google confirming that. And Google has not told me about any update outside of them fixing the bugs.
It looks like things are beginning to settle down and hopefully today Google will tell us those bugs with canonicalization and mobile-indexing are fully resolved as of today.
For now, there is really nothing you can do outside of just making your site better and more smiley.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
