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Google may have had two search ranking algorithm updates, one around May 9th and one around May 3rd. Google began its site reputation abuse policy enforcement this week with manual actions, and it is not about linking. Google said sites may recover from the helpful content update. Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, responded to search quality issues in an interview. Google is now hiding the number of search results under the tools menu. Google will remove the disavow link tool at some point. Gemini stopped linking to sources. Google renamed AI Answers back to AI Overview. Google is testing a new Notes button in Search. Google SGE said you should drink urine to pass a kidney stone. Google has product review summary labels. Google may show searchers how many people purchased on your e-commerce site. Google Ads new Performance Max for marketplaces. Rumors of 25% of Google Ads accounts being audited are false. Bing is testing clearer distinctions between free and paid search results. Google LSAs ranking help document removed that proximity is used for ranking. Google Local Business Profiles is testing a new review listing. Google Search is testing showing only local results for near me queries. Google Analytics gained Google Ads conversion performance beta reporting. Statcounter said Google didn’t lose market share, it was a bug in the reporting. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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I am seeing signs of a possible Google search ranking update today, May 9th, between a spike in early chatter this morning within the SEO industry and many of the tools showing a significant lift in ranking volatility in the Google Search results.

As a reminder, the March 2024 core update started on March 5th and ended on April 19th, 45 days later. We then reported on ranking fluctuations both before April 25th (thinking it was the core update still) and also on May 3rd. And now we are seeing more ranking volatility on May 9th.

Google Tracking Tools

Let’s start with the tools, many of them are showing a spike in volatility this morning.

Semrush:

SimilarWeb:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mozcast:

SERPmetrics:

Accuranker:

Mangools:

Wincher:

SERPstat:

Cognitive SEO:

Algoroo:

SEO Chatter

It is still early in the day but I am seeing a spike in chatter about Google Search ranking volatility and fluctuations this morning. Here are some quotes from WebmasterWorld, this site and social media:

I am watching my Matomo real-time stats, and it feels like Google is throttling traffic on and off, on and off.

I don’t know about you guys but in my niche, something definitely has changed since last night. It’s not your regular shuffling. It’s nothing major but I am seeing even more Reddit pages, even more thin discussions and expired auction pages ranking. I don’t know if Google is doing this in anticipation for ChatGPT’s search but they have changed something. Are you guys seeing anything? In my niche, something definitely happened.

Without giving away my niche, I am going to give you one example: allamaa dot sa. I have never ever seen this site rank for anything in my niche. Now it’s in top 4/5 position for a bunch of keywords starting last night.

I am noticing that after last night, seems Google has gotten even worse understanding intent. I search for something very specific, it is showing me pages with one word of what I searched for ranking in top 10. I am so done with this man.

Yes, I am 50% down again. ha ha (not that it matters, as from 25 to 12 or 10 I do not care)

The SERPs are 0 intent. In most searches I have no intent competition at all (maybe 1 or 2), and yet Google push me down to page 4, 5, 6, and what not. They rank just pure non related garbage.

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Will Google announce an update? This is not a normal shuffle. I sense a change. Hard to explain but you can almost tell something is off even more than before. I really hate Google. I hate Google with a passion. I am now starting to hate their employees too. I know it’s not their fault but what they have done to businesses like mine is unforgivable. All for what? They were already making a lot of money.

All affected pages have continued to decline since March and are gradually disappearing completely from the top 30…It seems like she has a serious illness (HCU). I can no longer hear this drivel from Google about any site eventually recovering from HCU.

Yes maybe if you sold it, the contents were completely deleted and wasn’t used for a few years. Then it may be that it ranks again…

I only work with a handful of sites at a time. Two saw significant increases today. Tools are still catching up.

One example: household name eCommerce store in AU that’s a leader in their niche. Has had a gradual decline over the past 2 years, to a point where they barely… pic.twitter.com/wHtuhrgaja

— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) May 9, 2024

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Microsoft’s disclosure of search ads on Bing has not been the greatest, honestly, in many cases, worse than Google’s disclosures. Recently, however, Bing has been testing a clearer distinction between its ads and organic free listings.

Frank Sandtmann spotted this and posted about it on Mastodon and after fiddling with it enough, I was able to replicate it.

Look at how the ads are in the white background and the free organic listings are in the gray background:

I wonder if this will go live or after Microsoft sees the results, they will go back to making the distinction between ads and free results almost impossible to see.

Frank posted more examples on Mastodon.

Forum discussion at Mastodon.