During 2017 there were a lot of speculations about Google updates regarding their algorithm. It seems that at the end of the year, predictions became a reality, Google confirmed the upgrading that shifted rankings in the SERPs.
A Google representative stated, “We released several minor improvements during this timeframe, part of our regular and routine efforts to improve relevance.” Several webmasters argued that the changes are connected to keyword punctuations and doorway pages.
What is more, many of the changes showed big wings in the google search results. SEO chatter and tools started lighting up as a sign of significant changes in the core ranking algorithm with Google search.
A few of the SEO tool vendors who do scale tracking of fluctuations were reached out to get where the updates were targeted.
According to the Product Owner of SEMrush Sensor, Ilya Onskul,“On top of the general volatility score per country, Sensor tracks scores for various industries and indicates the change in 15 SERP features and % of HTTPS and AMP”.
She states that several industries experience a lot of changes on a daily basis and they also experience the volatility spikes about their common score.
Based on what she gathered, Onskul concluded that something had happened last December, when the updates occurred that the highest SERP volatility on mobile across most categories, most affected on mobile being Autos & Vehicles, Law & Government, Reference were spotted.
After that, Sensor reported another spike in volatility. It was related to hobbies & Leisure, Science, Jobs & Education, Home & Garden, Internet & Telecom. And its most significant fluctuation was on mobiles as well.
In the case of Searchmetrics, its founder Marcus Tober argued that they conducted a deep analysis on the matter and they observed some changes that appeared to be “typical Panda and Phantom symptoms,” but they were not represented at large systematic scale. However, many websites lost visibility.
In connection to this, several users have stated their discontent with the changes due to their loss of visibility especially in such an important month like December. They claimed that their sites mostly dropped between a 20% and 30% its traffic which affected their work.
Users asked Google to go back to what Google Search offered due to their fluctuation which, in some cases, lead them to change their ranking position drastically.
Now that December is over, it would be wise to check rankings and conduct and auditing if changes have affected your site. On the other hand, it might be quite early to see how these changes really affected users and their websites but some domino effect can be observed in a dramatic rise in volatility in the UK, Germany, France, Australia, and Spain.
It might show that Google modifications done last December in the US are now spreading around the world. It would not take long for other countries to experience Google effects on their sites.
Please check our latest post on "Google´s Snippets up to 320 Characters ".
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