In a recent article published on the “SEO roundtable” blog, the CEO of RustyBrick, Barry Schwartz, mentioned some unusual fluctuations in Google search rankings. He saw some significant and some off-chart volatility that tracking tools reported. It has opened a discussion around the SEO communities and forums.
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Google Product Review UpdateÂ
Google’s product review system allows users to show aggregate reviews for products to all the customers interested in buying the product. Recently, on March 23, Google updated its Product rating system, after which some users saw fluctuations in it. However, it wasn’t significant at that time, but on March 31, these minor issues spiked.Â
It created confusion in the community as to whether the recent update was responsible for the fluctuations. SEO experts Lily Ray and Glenn Gabe also tweeted about the matter and confirmed volatility with some sites.
See Also: Google December Product Reviews Update Affects More Than English Language Sites?
Discussions within the SEO Community
The increase in fluctuations led to a discussion among the SEO community. It means that it is being faced by people all around the world. The first chatter was about how the UK traffic was slightly off on Sunday. In another discussion, a member mentioned how the spiked traffic is not a good thing. It has already happened in 2020, and after a month, the traffic crashed entirely.
Another member highlighted how Google and Bing show the same search behavior when it is not legal to collude, price fix, etc. The other members also expressed concern about this volatility and mentioned how the traffic is fluctuating.Â
Tracking Tools
Some tracking tools online showed a massive spike in volatility, some of which are mentioned below.
Semrush
The marketing platform Semrush showed very high fluctuations in the traffic in March and the first week of April.
king Tools
Advanced Web Rankings
Advanced Web Rankings calculate volatility on ranking changes of over 400,000 desktops and 200,000 mobile keywords. During March, it also confirmed fluctuations.
SERPmetrics
If you check the flux chart for 30 days on SERPmetric; you can quickly see how volatile the traffic was within these days. The spike decreased in the last week of March but then increased after March 30.
Accuranker
Accuranker’s unique ‘Google Grump’ Ratings highlight the unrest in Google’s algorithm. The grump rating on the website was chill till March 31, but you can see the cautious behavior in the ratings after that. Further, the rating varied from country to country.
RankRanger
On RankRanger, the risk level increased around March 31, during which the risk level was around 68. Later, it decreased on April 4 but again went high after it.
We can conclude that it may be Google’s recent update that this unrest happened. However, we can’t confirm anything now as Google has not confirmed whether the update is complete or not.