SEARCHENGINES
Weekend Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update – November 11th
It seems as if I see more volatility signals on the weekends with Google Search than I do during the weekdays. We may have had another Google search ranking algorithm update, unconfirmed, this weekend, around November 11th and 12th.
I saw chatter start to spike up a bit both in public and private SEO forums on Friday afternoon. I also noticed that the tracking tools, at least some of them, showed more volatility on Friday and Saturday than on a normal weekday this past week.
Weekend Update Trend
Like I said, it seems we have been seeing more volatility signals on the weekends than weekdays. For example, we had reports of an update last weekend, on November 4th and 5th, the weekend before that on October 28th/29th, the spam update kind of surged on a Friday/Saturday with Octber 21st and 22nd, but the one before that was on a Thursday, October 13th.
Recently, it just seems we are seeing adjustments on Fridays and Saturdays. I mean, that can make sense if Google has search launch meetings towards the end of the week and pushes happen on Fridays? I am just guessing here…
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the chatter I found across the SEO community about this unconfirmed Google search update.
I mean I could bomb out like the October spam update; things may return to what they were when the spam update hit; I am trying to stay positive. 2/3 of posts posted yesterday rank 1s …. the fightback is coming, Friday is historically the slowest day for weekdays, today even though it is lower than normal, obviously, it is up almost 10% to last Friday too 😉
‘Tis early Saturday afternoon for me and it is very noticeable that something has been “changed” to my global site in the past 48 hours with a return to mostly single page views per visitor. I have seen this pattern several times before when G has done something therefore it will be interesting to see for how long it continues.
After an above-average first 10 days of the month today is extremely quiet across all sites from all regions.
On Saturday my global site was at the lower end of average page views at just under 61%, today it is looking much more normal with many muliple page views, actual metrics right now show -25% fewer uniques but +20% page views, much closer to average.
I continue to be surprised by the UK hotel site, it is way, way up on previous years for a November with only beer sales down a little, food and accommodation are still going well with Xmas meal bookings ahead of previous years!
Here is some from Twitter:
Hey @rustybrick I am seeing HUGE swings in the SERP these past 24 hours, anything on your end? Dramatic gains and drops in the rankings.
— Taylor Kurtz (@RealTaylorKurtz) November 13, 2022
At least, rankings are not stable.
— Sturdy Business (@SturdyBusiness) November 13, 2022
Rankings completely unstable
— Chris Carberg (@ChrisCarberg) November 13, 2022
yes something definitely happened
— Tariq Aziz (@tariqaziz915) November 13, 2022
Am also seeing, I have mentioned you a day ago
— IjazPMLN (@IjazMNS) November 13, 2022
Massive shuffle in rankings, a lot of SERP volatility.
— Siddhesh N. (☞゚ヮ゚)☞ (@mrspiffffy) November 13, 2022
50% down overnight pic.twitter.com/a96kQo6hlb
— JS (@Jeelanisheik) November 14, 2022
yes suddenly my hit site is gaining again. pic.twitter.com/dX34Jp420X
— Santosh Kumar (@samlinkexpert) November 14, 2022
True Barry, I have already sensed that, like from Thursday actually. My 2 high traffic generating sites suddenly shown a good drop which has normal organic daily click is 51k but now at 43k per day from Thursday actually.
— Amit Saha 🇮🇳 | 🇸🇬 (@amitsh053) November 14, 2022
A few crazy swings across multiple sites.
— Justin Kinley Atkins (@FuziJuzi) November 14, 2022
Google Tracking Tools
Here are what the tracking tool are showing:
Are you noticing any big ranking swings from the weekend? Let us know.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Won’t Change The 301 Signals For Ranking & SEO
Gary Illyes from Google said on stage at the SERP conference last week that there is no way that Google would change how the 301 redirect signal works for SEO or search rankings. Gary added that it’s a very reliable signal.
Nikola Minkov quoted Gary Illyes as saying, “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal,” when asked if a 301 redirect not working is a myth. Honestly, I am not sure the context of this question, as it is not clear from the post on X, but here it is:
More from @methode:
– 301 redirect not working is a myth. “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal”.#SERPConf2024#SERPConf2024International— Nikola Minkov (@n_minkov) April 19, 2024
We’ve covered 301 redirects here countless times – but I never saw a myth that Google does not use 301 redirects as a signal for canonicalization or for passing signals from an old URL to the redirected URL.
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.
Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.
Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.
-
PPC6 days ago
19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024
-
MARKETING7 days ago
Ecommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
How to Make $5000 of Passive Income Every Month in WordPress
-
SEO7 days ago
2024 WordPress Vulnerability Report Shows Errors Sites Keep Making
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
10 Amazing WordPress Design Resouces – WordPress.com News
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
[GET] The7 Website And Ecommerce Builder For WordPress
You must be logged in to post a comment Login