Every Monday, I end up covering an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update but this past week, going into the weekend, was even more volatile than the others. I am seeing way more chatter, and even the tools are showing heavier volatility than the normal high volatility.

There was a lot of movement mid-to-late last week and then this weekend even more. Wednesday, November 30th was a big movement day. But then again, this weekend had some big movement as well, such as December 2nd and 3rd were pretty big.

Tracking Tools

This time, I’ll start with the charts to show you what the automated tracking tools are showing. Some, as you can see, are pretty heated up – even Semrush which is always calm now showed a big spike:

RankRanger:

Mozcast:

SERPmetrics:

Cognitive SEO:

Semrush:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

SERPstat:

Google SEO Chatter

I am going to include both the December and some end-of-November chatter from the ongoing WebmasterWorld threads so you can see what is going on; I’ll include them in order of oldest to newest chatter:

Today I have the biggest drop I’ve ever seen. Did anyone else notice anything big today?

My search traffic nearly doubled yesterday, it doubled from a very low base but it is a move in the right direction. Numbers have dropped back slightly today.

More of my articles are also gaining impressions again, the position is terrible but at least google is doing something with them.

Still down about 98% from before the spam update.

Yesterday traffic skyrocketed across the board, but this morning USA traffic is down 54%. Only USA is down…AGAIN. On days like this where USA traffic opens mysteriously low it tends to recover somewhat and close the day at just under break even.

My UK traffic is now almost 50% of my USA traffic, which is ludicrous. It was 10% for years. That’s not due to extra UK traffic, but the loss of USA traffic over the years. USA traffic is so tamped down due to the intense competition from the number of ads and on page crap being run at any one time. In my field I am also seeing numerous new businesses running instagram ads…they all appear to be different brands, but look like clones and they are selling remarkably similar items at very low prices. Soon they will run each other into the ground.

Just checked my metrics for the past 7 days and my USA-only traffic is down 32% as a proportion of my overall traffic. Yesterday I was having a good day until US traffic hardly kicked-in at all.

I think it’s already rolling out (unannounced). Started on December 1st. I have had big swings with traffic disappearing and reappearing and it just disappeared again tonight.

Something massive is happening since midnight on Saturday. From 12am to 10:30am so far traffic has vanished. Search traffic is down 47% and direct is down almost as much. It appears to be hitting EN language traffic…USA -62%, UK -59%, CA -68%, AU -50%. I have never seen drops like this so hopefully it will be short lived!

Is anyone else seeing a huge drop (or increase) today? I’m at -40% of my search traffic at 2pm.

Looking like normal Saturday traffic here, global site on average UK gig site ahead of average as per usual.

I am seeing huge drops on my sites.

We’ve had an encouraging hint of recovery since Friday. It started with an increase of 4.7 percent in Google traffic on Friday, compared to the same day of the week a year ago. The increase on Saturday was 9.93 percent, and today (Sunday) it was 13.11 percent.

Yesterday was our worst google traffic day ever. Today it is not looking better.

Same here; my traffic was the same when I had my first weekend over three years ago, LOL!

Now, today my traffic is bursting… Honestly, I am starting to get some tinfoil hat hairdo going on… Is Google trolling me? Why? Its almost Christmas! I am not even going to say things are up; it seems extreme swings are going both ways nearly every few days; this is beyond bizarre.

Have any of you noticed anything really big this weekend and last week? Let us know.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.