There were many title-tattles about Google Search Ranking Update on October 6th and 7th. The rumors started from a decrease in traffic in various pages across the USA, UK, and UAE. At the same time, some pages experienced an increase in traffic due to their ranking.
It all started on Oct 6th, carried to Oct 7th, and almost died down on Oct 8th. Pages experienced something similar to SERPs update during June and July. That’s why there was so much uproar around the topic.
Tracking tools had also shown changes in Google search results. It doesn’t show any significant potential updates like the one in July. But It still has a considerable effect. It is necessary to mention that the officials confirmed nothing.
These are some SEO chatter threads from WebmasterWorld and Twitter:
October’s improvement is continuing for my global site. Yesterday, Tuesday, saw PVs precisely at our January to March average. Direct traffic has increased considerably over previous months.
10 am USA traffic shut off and down to almost zero for two hours…back to the same BS June patterns again. Is anyone else seeing this with their USA traffic?
USA traffic is still way off for me, down 48% today at noon primarily because my ranking has dropped for high-volume terms to my most important landing pages.
Traffic from Western Europe is still far below average, almost non-existent. The UK remains strong, AU has reappeared, but CA has vanished. With Google these days, they always make sure that your traffic is never firing on all cylinders.
We see a return of the drop in USA traffic in the middle part of the day again. It starts in the morning and traffic remains very low for hours. Back to the old June patterns
For me, traffic has fallen off the cliff edge today with hardly any multiple-page view visitors.
Over the last few weeks, I have also seen many visits by Singapore, Huawei Clouds.
Yesterday was my worst traffic day in years. Gulp!
Today is starting like a train wreck, despite ranking being higher. USA down 31%, the UK down 56%, UAE down 27% and so on. Many of my most important landing pages are down 30-65%, if any visits at all.
Google is changing the page layout significantly…adding more ads at the top and throughout the page. I don’t see users liking such a disordered page; it’s like going into a store and asking for one thing and being shown twenty other items before they show you what you asked for.
Huge drop yesterday. Today it’s much worse.
All competitors I am tracking are down today with only one exception, me lol I am in the same position as I was yesterday, but the most significant volume keywords were targeted and pushed down the serps. Some low-volume keywords improved. The algorithms constantly target high volume keywords
The possible updates are supposed to be following:
- Google is changing title links in SERPs.
- Google AdSense is moving to a first-price auction model.
- Testing five results in the local pack by Google.
- Google test search refinements in Autocomplete.
There were some more changes spotted on 6th and 7th October.
Tracking Tools
Several tracking tools did notice some fluctuations in SERPs. Here are some charts for nerds:
Seymour:
Algorithm:
Scientific SEO:
The ranking fluctuations were observed by many. And you will notice more of these fluctuations for some time. It is because Google is constantly testing out new SEO updates for the upcoming year.