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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On January 18th

Published

2 years ago

January 19, 2023

It looks like we may have had another tremor or Google search ranking algorithm update kickoff yesterday, Wednesday, January 18th. We just had after the December 2022 helpful content update and December 2022 link spam update finished on January 12th and now we have this, again.

I am seeing both chatter from deep within the SEO industry, and also, some of the tracking tools are picking up the volatility. Let’s start with the trackers today…

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tracking tool are showing:

Mozcast:

Semrush:

Cognitive SEO:

Advanced Web Rankings:

So these tools have picked up on the volatility or will likely soon pick up on it.

SEO Chatter

Here are some quotes from the WebmasterWorld forums that started on late Friday and spiked up more on Saturday. There is also a lot of comments on this story with ranking changes.

Fingers crossed, my global traffic seems to be back to just above average. Last week saw above-average business inquiries, including some from the West for a change, especially from popular tourist destinations.

another spike today Semrush 5.4
My main keywords are not stable up/down

Ditto. Our ranks are great but the ad saturation is just so huge we are getting very little traffic. I’m just glad we jumped out of G Ads before this mess hit. My hunch is only those who have special ad pricing with Google, or have a possible affiliate earnings arrangement with Google, will survive this bloodbath in ads. The lack of free traffic will also starve many businesses out of existence.
Our sales outside of Google are very strong, so I am thankful some are using other search engines for shopping-related searches.

Global traffic today was unusually high to one specific widget which is popular but not that popular! Checking my logs I found a common referrral from a specialist US designer magazine, unsoliceted links still work.