SEARCHENGINES

Google Search Ranking Algorithm Volatility Cooling?

Published

5 months ago

July 25, 2023

For the past few months, Google’s search results have been very volatile, but over the past couple of days, it seems, at least to some rank-checking tools, the volatility is cooling and calming. I should note that I did see a spike in chatter over the weekend about movement from within the SEO community, so the tools and the community are not exactly aligned on this one.

We have seen many unconfirmed Google search ranking updates since the last official one in April 2023. But we are all expecting a confirmed update sometime soon.

So what are the tools showing?

Google Tracking Tools

Here is what the tools are showing, Semrush is one of the few tools that have not calmed down at all, while most of the others really showed a huge reduction in volatility:

Semrush:

SERPmetrics:

RankRanger:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SEO Chatter

But for some reason, over the weekend, I saw a spike in chatter that may have cooled a bit this morning but was pretty heated over the weekend. Between the WebmasterWorld thread and the comments on this site, here is what SEOs were saying over the weekend:

High traffic this morning and Semrush sensor on fire yet.

As usual, we are in sync…my traffic is very high today from everywhere outside of the US (-49%), CA (-100% 0 visits), and AU (-36%). This is deceiving because it’s a lot of useless, one-hit traffic to interior pages… Meanwhile, some of my most important category pages are -50% today. Google is sending irrelevant traffic with one hand and taking away the best referrals with the other, it seems.

Extremely high traffic from everywhere yesterday, except USA which ended the day -11%. Search was up 19% and direct traffic up 73%. Today is a similar pattern, with the entire world going strong, but USA at -46% this morn…despite my ranking heading upwards in the USA market for both desktop and mobile. It seems that Google is focusing on the USA market to squeeze the hardest by far…

Extremely high traffic from everywhere yesterday and today…

I can confirm traffic is up across all main markets on the 22-nd and 23-d and there was a possitive movement on many long tail phrases. It’s almost like the traffic before the most recent update.

Sunday’s traffic is really nonsensical.

The entire morning it was throttled and only getting like 5% of the usual traffic. Then near mid-day a small surge in traffic. Suddenly, traffic became 0 all of sudden until now (10 hours and counting). Checked keyword rankings and they are as normal.

There are a lot more comments but I don’t want to overload you with them all, you can click through to those links to read them.

So what are you all seeing? Are things calming for you all today?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2023

Published

5 days ago

December 3, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Hanukkah (aka Chanukah) starts this coming Thursday night, December 7th. Google has added its Hanukkah decorations to the Google Search results interface to celebrate. Google does this every year and I expect to see the same rollout in the coming weeks for Christmas and Kawanzaa but for now, since Chanukah is in the coming days, we have the Hanukkah decorations live at Google Search.

Here is a screenshot of the Chanukah decorations as they look like on the mobile search results.

You can see it yourself by searching on Google for [chanukah], [hanukkah], but not yet [חֲנוּכָּה‎] or other spelling variations yet but it should soon. It looks better on mobile than it does on desktop results.

To see the past, the 2023 decorations, 2021 decorations, 2020 Chanukah decorations, 2019 Google holiday decorations, the 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and so on.

Happy Chanukah, everyone!

Forum discussion at X.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Pay Accepted Icons In Google Search Results

Published

5 days ago

December 3, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Google seems to be testing a Google Pay Accepted label or icon in the Google search results. This label has the super G logo followed by the words “Pay accepted” words next to search result snippets that support Google Pay and notate such in their structured data.

This was first spotted by Khushal Bherwani who shared some screenshots of this on X – here is one:

Here are some more screenshots:

Here is test and without test window for same query. pic.twitter.com/n9cYWBOsro

— Khushal Bherwani (@b4k_khushal) October 20, 2023

Brodie Clark also posted some screenshots after on X:

In continuation from the test from October, Google is now testing out a new Google Pay label associated with organic results. Last month, Google was testing Pay Accepted text, with this month changing it to Pay encrypted checkout. More details: https://t.co/MvFNoPmMDR pic.twitter.com/WDVVc4RbTO

— SERPs Up 🌊 (@SERPalerts) November 30, 2023

I tried to replicate this but I came up short.

This is not the first time Google had similar icons like this in its search results.

Forum discussion at X.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

Published

6 days ago

December 2, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Typically, Google Discover shows content that is less than a day old, but it can show content that is weeks, months, or even years old. However, typically, Google will show more recent content in the Discover feed. Well, that may have changed with the new Google follow feature.

Glenn Gabe, who is a very active Google Discover user, noticed that since the Follow feature rolled out, he has been seeing content that is weeks and months old way more often than before the follow feature rolled out. Glenn wrote on X that “this could also be playing a role. i.e. Google isn’t providing as much recent content, but instead, focusing on providing targeted content based on the topics you are following.”

It makes sense that if you follow a specific topic and if Google Discover only shows the most authoritative types of content, it might be hard for Google to find new content on that topic. So it does make sense that Google may show older content more often for that specific topic you follow.

Here are screenshots Glenn shared:

Google Discover Old Stories Follow