Google Update Rolls Out Over Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend Google Unleashes 5th Update in Less Than a Month

author image Written by: Nicole McCormick Categories - In The News, SEO

Here we go….again! Lately, it seems like we can’t have a weekend go by without another Google update.

To refresh your memory, we’ve reported on at least four updates in the last couple of weeks alone.

READ MORE: Google Unleashes Possible Small Algorithm Update on Yom Kippur

The latest update, which rolled out over the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend, appears pretty similar to the last few in terms of forum chatter and volatility picked up by tracking tools.

Here’s what industry folk had to say on WebmasterWorld:

“Traffic remains very poor, although USA traffic was normal today while UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Brazil and others way down at -28% to -66%. Home page and landing pages still much lower, even though my ranking has been higher for most of this week.”

“My backlinks dropped at the same time the rankings dropped. I only lost rankings for converting keywords, pushed down to position 80. What mattes is the number of impressions and not rankings itself. My impressions are down 40% today, huge. I hope in the next few days it will recover.”

“Traffic yesterday was insane…starting off extremely low, then suddenly surging for the rest of the day.”

“I think the update on October 6th and 7th was a very big update. Our lowest traffic level ever was on October 9th. I can only hope that it doesn’t stay that way. For some keyword areas, the top 10 have been completely exchanged. We had seen it before in July, when it was taken back after a short time.”

Tracking tools have also picked up some volatility. Here are some screenshots originally posted by Search Engine Round Table:

Semrush:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

Tags - In The News, SEO, Google Algorithm Updates, Google update

Nicole McCormick

Nicole is a wordsmith wizard, passionate about the written word and an avid storyteller who uses creatively crafted prose to help bring your brand’s story to the next level. A former journalist with writing credits in both local and national news publications and a few newspaper awards under her belt, Nicole now enjoys telling your stories and finding new and creative ways to create valuable content that resonates with audiences in the digital landscape.

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What in the world is going on with the internet this week? It was only Monday that we reported that Google had rolled out a massive unconfirmed update, and the following day, Facebook experienced a colossal outage affecting billions of people around the world. Now, Search Engine Round Table is reporting yet ANOTHER unconfirmed update appears to be happening. And yes, this all happened in the span of a week. What a wild ride it’s been.

While this latest update doesn’t appear to be as big as the one that took place last weekend, Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Round Table is reporting that tracking tools seem to show that an update began rolling out on October 6th, peaked on October 7th, and is now starting to slow down.

This time around, there is way more industry chatter going on in the SEO forums. Here are some interesting snippets posted in WebmasterWorld around October 6th:

“Seeing a return of the drop in USA traffic in the middle part of the day again. 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, many visits by Singapore, Huawei Clouds.”

“Yesterday was my worst traffic day in years. Gulp!”

“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 biggest volume keywords were targeted and pushed down the serps. Some low volume keywords improved. The algorithms constantly target high volume keywords.”

Tracking tools aren’t showing a ton of volatility, mostly just a shift in the Google search results. Overall, things look pretty calm compared to the update last weekend. Still, we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Check out the screenshots posted by Search Engine Round Table:

Semrush:

SEM Rush tracking

Cognitive SEO:

Cognitive SEO report

SERPmetrics:

SERP Metrics report

It’s starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day, because surprise surprise, Google may have rolled out yet another algorithm update last weekend.

According to Search Engine Round Table, the update appears to be pretty big compared to the last one and would have likely begun rolling out on September 24th and ramped up on the 25th. On Sunday the 26th is when things started to cool off a bit.

Evidence of a potential update was confirmed by both tracking tools and chatter within SEO forums.

One comment posted to Google’s Webmaster Help thread stated that:

“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.”

Here are some additional comments pulled from WebmasterWorld:

“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.”

“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.”

Furthermore, here are some screen grabs of tracking tools that track how volatile the Google search results are that were posted by Search Engine Roundtable. Each tracking tool shows massive spikes on the 24th and 25th of September.

Mozcast:

Mozcast rankings