SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Around February 14th

Here we go again; yet another Google search ranking algorithm update seems to have touched down on February 14th, maybe as early as February 13th, and seems to be continuing to shake things up throughout today. We previously covered unconfirmed updates on the 8th/9th and also the 4th.
I am seeing an increase in chatter starting on the 13th of February into today as well as some of the Google automated tracking tools are picking up on volatility and fluctuations.
We are due a broad core update soon, so maybe we are all getting that itch?
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the chatter here in the comments and also on WebmasterWorld:
Is it me or has traffic died the last couple of days? Really died!
Today, my traffic showed a steep drop, the worst value I have seen in 2023. How about yours?
No traffic on 14th feb. organic traffic is less than 20% as compared to previous year comparison.
Something is definitely going on, for the first time in years in the last 24 hours I have not received ONE piece of email spam, not one, zero spam … Considering the usual volume of garbage I get this is very significant.
The past week and a bit – nearly 2 weeks we had higher traffic and loads of conversions. We took around 3 weeks worth of orders in this space of time. Then last Tuesday / Wednesday google closed down that traffic and we have not had a single order since.
I’m in a different market, lead generation, but the timeline sounds remarkably similar. For 2-3 weeks we saw higher volume, steady, quality traffic to our services. Around the 4th of Feb it all seemed to have steadied out, but now the quality traffic arrives in short bursts. Meaning, we may be slow for the first 6 hours of our business day, then at some point in the afternoon we’ll see a flurry of lead activity for 1-2 hours, before it all turns back off again. It’s not related to a single service, a single area, or a specific thing. At one point, I thought it was ad-related, but I’m no longer sure since the hour or three of activity might come at 9am today, or 2pm tomorrow.
Definitely not normal traffic trends.
Well, I haven’t see this in quite some time, so far today one visitor 2hrs and 4 mins with 254 page views and still on the site !
Interesting that so many of us have noticed a huge drop in sales recently. My visibility is at a high point going back as far as I can see, but today my search traffic is -25%. USA / Canada are -43% and -40% this morning at 11am. Traffic to my landing pages is down dramatically…almost all of them simultaneously.
My SERPs are all over the place today. If I get the layout with the favicons I am always 1st, if I get the layout without favicons then the top 4 seem to just be shuffling about, I can go from 1st to 3rd to 4th & back to 1st again just by opening new incognito tabs..
Daily, my two websites are shuffling their position front and back, no stability.
Whatever is going on, traffic is very low today…USA is -30% at 4:30pm and most of my major landing pages are way down. Canada is -66%, Australia is at zero today. This is while my visibility is higher than at any time in the last two years according to SEM. I checked and for the first time I am coming in 1st place in searches that I have been at 2 or 3 for years now…but the traffic just isn’t there.
Huge drop the last 3 days, but metrics on website backend are consistent.
More emails from possible customers, maybe the end of my zombie traffic increase I’m having since 2 months..
Glenn Gabe posted another site that is on this rollercoaster:
Remember the 1/26 unconfirmed update I covered, and further impact and reversals on 2/3? Well here we go again. Here’s a product reviews site that surged on 1/26, made it through 2/3, but just tanked again on 2/13. Google is clearly testing or tweaking something… Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/wkRqbRac9t
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 15, 2023
So as you can see, there is a lot of chatter in the past couple of days.
Google Tracking Tools
Some of the tools have picked up on the volatility today and yesterday, some have not picked up on it yet. Here is what I see from the popular tracking tools right now.
What are you all noticing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search With More Detailed Car Comparison Tools

Google keeps expanding its car search features, threatening the Edmunds and car websites out there. Here you can see Google showing you car comparison tools and charts to help you pick the best car for your needs.
Melissa Fach spotted this change and posted about it on Twitter. She wrote, “Wow, not fair to so many sites that test drive the cars to come up with these car lists.”
Here is a screenshot that I was able to generate of this, so you can see it yourself, you can also click on it to enlarge it:
When I click to see more, I get some sort of “failure” white screen from Google. But Melissa has screenshots of what happens when you click deeper:
Here are Melissa’s tweets:
Wow, not fair to so many sites that test drive the cars to come up with these car lists. pic.twitter.com/CuUjqwpoau
— Melissa Fach 🇺🇦 (@SEOAware) May 31, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
New Google Search Generative Experience Drops Result Count

Google’s new Search Generative Experience seems to be missing one thing that SEOs and reporters often look at: the number of results Google returns for that query.
Some use it for a site command to see how many pages Google indexed from a site, which is not a good estimate. Some use it to say how important and competitive a topic is. Some use it to make a good headline about a topic. And some just like to see how many results Google can s how for a specific query.
But in the new Search Generative Experience, Google is not showing the result count as Glenn Gabe noted on Twitter.
Here is a raw site command on the new Search Generative Experience, there is no number of results being shown:
I tried on mobile as well, same deal. But then I thought, why not just ask it like you would in real life, as a long query. So I searched for [how many pages did Google index on www.seroundtable.com] and nope, it initially didn’t generate an answer, so I clicked the generate AI response and it gave me this:
The traditional search experience looks like this, by the way:
31,200 results is what it returned. Again, site commands are not accurate, according to Search Console I have about 130,000 pages indexed. So it is probably a good thing the estimated result count is going away?
Here are Glenn’s tweets:
Also, the percentage in the screenshot is from NewsGuard and not SGE. Just wanted to clarify that.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 31, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Console Insights Can Now Show More Insights Even If It’s Not Associated With Google Analytics

Google announced that Search Console Insights, where the property is not associated with a Google Analytics property, was upgraded to show more insights. Specifically new content performance insights, such as your site’s most popular and trending content on Search.
Here is a screenshot of the new “your growing content” report:
Google posted this on Twitter and added this screenshot, saying “Search Console Insights got an upgrade for properties that are not associated with Google Analytics. This includes new content performance insights, such as your site’s most popular and most trending pieces of content on Search.”
Here is the Google announcement as posted on Twitter:
Search Console Insights got an upgrade for properties that are not associated with Google Analytics. This includes new content performance insights, such as your site’s most popular and most trending pieces of content on Search. More about the association https://t.co/gyBfWMG4vH pic.twitter.com/ctyO5rvSbK
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) May 31, 2023
So that is a plus!
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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