I know we had a long Holiday weekend with both Father’s Day and Juneteenth but there were some tremors of note related to a possible Google search ranking algorithm update over the weekend. It might be just normal holiday weekend chatter but some of the tools are also showing volatility that match the chatter.

As a reminder, the Google May 2022 core update began rolling out on May 25, 2022 and was officially pronounced complete on June 9th but we saw big tremors before and after the start and end date of that update. Were those related to this May 2022 core update – only Google knows and Google has not really commented directly about that – outside of old comments that anything that was seen prior or post update are not “broad” core updates. But maybe those were tremors of the update? I don’t know.

In any event, the ongoing WebmasterWorld continues to have SEOs and webmasters reporting on fluctuations and volatility after the core update was completed. Here is some of that chatter on or after June 19th:

Is anyone else seeing a big drop in international traffic today? I’m seeing USA traffic up for the first time in a week, UK is also normal…but Australia is -70% for two days now…Canada -40%, UAE is also -40%. Germany is -20%, France and most of the rest of W. Europe is at 0 visits today…not one visit. Perhaps we are seeing the rollout of new serp layouts to a wide market?

That’s just 1/2 of a Googleday completed for me and traffic at 20% of expected levels. Proportionately the visitor demographics has not changed which is a surprise therefore where has the “volume” gone IF that still exists or is it mostly Google ads now meaning unless you are #1 then you will have to pay for traffic?

Nothing is finished, as far as I can tell.

Yes the official update is completed…. but… as we all know tweaks will still happen to the algo they say nothing about.
I am seeing some of the same that you are Redbar in that pages that were normally in the back of the pack now making it up front. To me it feels as if the algo is reassessing the overall content and with that some wonky things happen.

Traffic here has been steady over the past couple of days but its an interesting mix.

Very low USA traffic today…the day peaked at 6am and declined in a stairstep pattern until 1pm, where it flatlined until 6pm. Interesting how traffic is now performing the opposite of the last 20 years, with traffic highest at midday and lowest at night and early mornings. Google is clearly ratcheting up the ads, or dumping more items on the page on the fly to ensure that all the traffic is skimmed during the best hours.

Monday’s traffic was very low for a weekday at 56% however, at the moment, it is looking more normal and already at 33% and roughly where I’d expect it to be.

Although traffic is down my USA traffic is remaining consistent at its usual proportionate average therefore, for me, it is not the lack of any specific country but the overall volume of traffic which keeps telling me it is something else that is affecting my traffic levels plus it is now very noticeable our lack of incoming realworld business enquiries, which in itself is very unusual at this time of year, suggesting a lack of intended / possible / proposed large national / international projects.

Big drop yesterday, and today seems to keep that big drop trend.

Google is no longer indexing a complete page, even from a high profile site.

I’ve tried searching for specifics and, although it’s on the page, it’s not indexed.

The result is it makes it harder to find stuff, so Google search is failing. What Google did do was to deliver other pages, but they didn’t have the specifics.

To be honest I’ve been waiting to see if anyone else had noticed this, I actually saw for a very recently updated site of mine Google displaying the keyword link from my sitemap!

I’ve never seen that before plus trying to get anything new spidered, unless it’s a substantial news site, is becoming very slow, not hours, not weeks, but months, and I’m also seeing even more older, 7-10 years, double Pinterest links in the top 20.

There is more chatter and all in the past few days…

Google Tracking Tools

Some of the tracking tools are showing changes as well. It is important to note that last week Semrush changed its tracker and adjusted its levels to stop it from always showing such high levels. But the spikes are still there, just not always in the red – which makes sense. Semrush confirmed this on Twitter saying “to improve sensitivity, the sensor was recalibrated to most accurately portray the volatility change over time.” So keep that in mind…

Semrush:

RankRanger:

Mozcast:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Cognitive SEO:

Accuranker:

SERPmetrics:

So it seems we had more tremors – might be related to the past Google core update, might be related to something unrelated to the core update but some other algorithmic shift, might be normal Google shifts, might be holiday traffic or something else.

Have you noticed changes and volatility in the past few days?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.