Big Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On September 24th and 25th

Once again, there may have been yet another Google search ranking algorithm update this past weekend. This is unconfirmed still but it seems like a very big update based on the tracking tools and some of the comments I saw from the community.

The update, like I hinted to in my Friday video, started Friday morning, September 24th and really heated up through the day and into Saturday September 25th. It seemed to have cooled down a lot of Sunday, September 26th.

SEO Community Chatter

One complaint about this update in the Google Webmaster Help thread said “My website, which has long had poor rankings at around 18-20, is now dropping like a stone. I looked a few minutes ago and it was position 46 (I’m searching from the UK). Everyone else will probably see it even lower I’d imagine.” That is one big drop!

Here are some chatter at WebmasterWorld:

Until UK 12.00 today I had my old volume of traffic and spread back, it started yesterday evening, however since 12.00 the switch has been flicked off and traffic has almost stopped.

Today I had more normal traffic levels, but all of my Australia and Canada traffic is once again down 60%+. Instead among my top referrers today are Nigeria and Pakistan. Nigerian traffic was so high that I blocked the entire country as in my experience it’s nothing good.

Traffic being pretty dreadful this week. Our ranking tools says we’re up though!

USA traffic down 48% by 5pm today…Australia also down 49%. Searches down 33% in total. Top ten ranking down in the the last month, but not down much today.

Sustained drop this past week. Guessing we’ve been hit somehow or it’s something technical our end?

Back to 2 years ago numbers.

My non-USA (read: non-converting) traffic is very high while USA traffic is lower every day since the 13th…yesterday down 37% and today down 47% at 2:30pm. My most important landing pages are all being hit on a rotating basis, normal one day, dropping by a huge amount the next. My ranking is up one day, down the next but no major moves. The overall effect is not one single new customer inquiry since last Sunday from anywhere in the world.

So there are a number of people who noticed very big traffic drops in the past few days.

Tracking Tools

Most of the tracking tools that track how volatile the Google search results are, spiked in a very very big way on the 24th and 25th of September. Here are screenshots of these tools.

Mozcast:

Semrush:

SERPmetrics:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

So as you can see, these tools were pretty hot over Friday and Saturday. Google did not confirm anything but it seems something big did happen. Did you notice anything?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.