It appears that there might have been another shakeup in Google search ranking algorithm on Wednesday, January 18th. This comes just after the December 2022 updates for helpful content and link spam were completed on January 12th. Many experts in the SEO industry have noticed signs of increased volatility in search rankings and a number of tracking tools, such as Mozcast, Semrush, Cognitive SEO, Advanced Web Rankings, RankRanger, Accuranker, SERPmetrics, and Algoroo, have detected changes as well. It is uncertain what the impact of this update will be on websites, but it’s clear that something is happening with the search rankings. It will be interesting to see how things unfold and how websites are affected.
Google Tracking Tools
Here are what the tracking tool are showing:
So these tools have picked up on the volatility or will likely soon pick up on it.
SEO Chatter
Here are some quotes from the WebmasterWorld forums that started on late Friday and spiked up more on Saturday. There is also a lot of comments on this story with ranking changes.
Fingers crossed, my global traffic seems to be back to just above average. Last week saw above-average business inquiries, including some from the West for a change, especially from popular tourist destinations.
another spike today Semrush 5.4
My main keywords are not stable up/down
Ditto. Our ranks are great but the ad saturation is just so huge we are getting very little traffic. I’m just glad we jumped out of G Ads before this mess hit. My hunch is only those who have special ad pricing with Google, or have a possible affiliate earnings arrangement with Google, will survive this bloodbath in ads. The lack of free traffic will also starve many businesses out of existence.Our sales outside of Google are very strong, so I am thankful some are using other search engines for shopping-related searches.
Global traffic today was unusually high to one specific widget which is popular but not that popular! Checking my logs I found a common referrral from a specialist US designer magazine, unsoliceted links still work.
Anyone else noticing very very low conversions from G traffic at the moment ?
Has anyone experienced a drop in traffic after seeing a sudden surge?Could a potential major update or another algorithm update be inbound?
Traffic has been much weaker since Tuesday, and today is very low. Search is down 15% and direct down 32% at noon. USA is off 30%, Canada -70%, and Australia has not had one visit yet today. Continental Europe also dropping like a stone. Only UK remains strong. Meanwhile, my ranking is stable and even slightly higher.
Have any of you noticed anything over the past 24-hours or so?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
