While I was offline over the past few days, the SEO chatter surrounding changes in Google search rankings continued to get very heated. Google's tracking tools seem to have calmed down a bit, but the chatter is still very heated. This is all while Google's March 2024 core update is still rolling out 51 days later.
More and more movement is occurring on many sites, but not all in a positive direction. Companies affected by the September 2024 Helpful Content Update are still not recovering, and many are showing further declines. And those who have been affected by other updates in the past are seeing all sorts of phenomena.
We reported on instability in the March core update multiple times on April 17th, April 14th, and earlier.
SEO chat
Here are some of the emerging topics within WebmasterWorld's SEO community, comments here and on social media.
Mondays for my global site have been bad so far at 70.4% compared to the April average. Traffic has been at this level since Thursday, April 18th. Everything was fine until then. Did I miss something?
It seems that something has changed again since April 21st. Down!
Yesterday there was a huge drop in all niches on my site. Today it seems to be even worse. Everything is completely dead today…
April 20th, 21st and 22nd were good. Late on the 22nd and into today, I seem to be seeing a decline, especially on my secondary site. However, the situation is not yet catastrophic.
The top three rankings are falling very slowly. The bottom rankings are also gradually rising.
Today was completely dead for me.
Something has been happening in the last few days. Similar trends can be seen at several sites. At first glance, keyword loss appears to be minimal, but traffic has plummeted by about half. If you look closely, many important opening positions that were carrying traffic are gone.If this continues, there will be almost no place left to survive.
The number of visitors from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. has fallen by 75%, with a significant drop today at 9 a.m. sharp. All of this is US traffic, which is down 33%. The UK, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates and Germany are all on the rise.
Direct traffic and Google traffic are gone. It looks like the update is nearing its end.
Are you noticing new traffic slumps? Known movement in serp that Google is pushing further down
My webpage was visible yesterday, April 24th, but after about 8pm that same day, the 90% off webpage disappeared. I can't find it on Google search. Just as my website was recovering, my finances took a huge hit and I'm still in the same situation.
Absolutely nothing today — dead!
Yes, same here.
As I said in a previous message, Saturday's numbers were the worst, and yesterday's numbers were so bad that I had to check to see if the site was down.
It's the same today. Throttling/Theft is on maximum settings.
My site is officially defunct after 14 years and is down 95% since HCU…
Google Morning Google Land! This is his April 25th edition of the “Core Update Notes”. Rumor has it that a reboot of Groundhog Day is currently being cast and I'm in the running for the lead role. 🙂 Yes, it's been 52 days since the release of the March core update and it's getting closer and closer… pic.twitter.com/IrGpqmSNSq
— Glenn Gabe (@glengabe) April 25, 2024
Google tracking tools
As you can see, the fluctuations in the tool have calmed down over the past few days, but the chatter is not on the same page as the tool. Here's what we're seeing:
Similar web:
Semlash:
Advanced web ranking:
Moz cast:
SERP metrics:
Accurunker:
Mangool:
Wincher:
SERPstat:
Algoroo:
Cognitive SEO:
More Google update stories
Here are previous articles about these updates:
What are you all watching?
WebmasterWorld forum discussion.