New Google Update

Organic traffic was definitely lower starting around the 3rd, but I have more engaged users coming to the website now. Sessions are down, but pages/session, bounce rate, and affiliate earnings have improved.
 
I didn't see any changes significant enough that they alerted me beyond the normal fluctuations.

They didn't drop any info regarding the number of queries it affected or anything like they usually do with a bigger update. I wonder just how much of an adjustment this really was or what it targeted.

@Boy, were you able to identify any specific pages that saw a drop in traffic and any common factors regarding intent, on-page optimization, or links aimed at the pages? Did you find any terms that may have fallen or risen for, that could account for the change in traffic quality?
 
OP,

For questions like these, you should also be checking SERPWoo....

We see these in real-time as they happen, not a day or 2 afterward like all other tools. You can even view global vs your own SERP if you want.

We have a little hump and then a larger spike last week.

Doesn't seem huge though overall, but you could have seen this without confirmation from Google or 48 hours later with our competitors.

Always best to check your own SERP too, which you can in with SERPWoo looking at the keywords and checking out Volatility scores.

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After getting rekt by every single update since the middle of last year I actually saw an increase of about 25% on this one. Only about 300% increase to go to get back where I started lol.
 
Ryuzaki said:
@Boy, were you able to identify any specific pages that saw a drop in traffic and any common factors regarding intent, on-page optimization, or links aimed at the pages? Did you find any terms that may have fallen or risen for, that could account for the change in traffic quality?
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One big page I noticed was initially ranking pretty well for keywords I wasn't targeting, and that keyword group now has a "banner" on the search page (like when you search for "denzel washington movies").

That might have been there before, but we also fell to the mid second page after being top 5 in that group of keywords. No real loss minus vanity stats.

Branded searches are up, especially those landing on my homepage.
 
Actually according to that tool this day had the biggest fluctuations they ever recorded.
 
Nearly 40% increase since last week. I can't say that it's all due to this update though as I've been majorly revamping/updating this website during March. I'd assume it is part of it.
 
Unfortunately I don't have any sites doing well right now as I am still building out my new one. The guys I talk to on Skype, Discord and Reddit seem to have managed to get through it without issue though.
 
Darth said:
Looks like the update is still rolling out...
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F5K7 said:
Actually according to that tool this day had the biggest fluctuations they ever recorded.
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I believe that's AuthorityLabs if I'm not mistaken. It's an error in the data. Google rolled out new HTML code for mobile devices that's causing rankings too look like they are fluctuating. I talk about it on my Oct 19th, 2017 journal post since it happened to us as well back then.

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^^ Screenshot from then.

In fact, it's happening to us at SERPWoo as well right now, except our system zeroes out results when HTML code, parsing engine, is detected to be changed so we don't get wild fluctuations like that anymore:

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There is no Google algo update - it's just HTML code update - which the rank trackers' programmers, like me, have to go in and re-sync to the correct new HTML code. The algo updates happened last week. AuthorityLabs will eventually zero out that data for volatility for today when they realize what's going on.

It's going to be a fun night tonight...

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It was Accuranker... and just like that I am rekt worse than before the update.
 
I read (didn't save a link, wasn't worth it, can summarize in one sentence) that although this was a broad quality update as opposed to anything specific, people are seeing big shuffles in the rich featured snippets in the SERPs, like the answer boxes. That's accounting for big fluctuations in traffic. Big winners and big losers, supposedly.
 
We've always had great visibility in Featured Snippets, even beating out our biggest competitor and with this update, we now have almost twice as many than our biggest competitor and way more than any other competitor...

What's interesting is, our organic rankings dropped slightly and some of the lesser quality results moved passed us. Our snippets bring in a shit load of traffic, but they're mostly informational.

Anyone have any insight as to why our organic results would drop (still on page one, but dropped a few spots) but snippets dramatically increase?
 
MichelangeSEO said:
We've always had great visibility in Featured Snippets, even beating out our biggest competitor and with this update, we now have almost twice as many than our biggest competitor and way more than any other competitor...

What's interesting is, our organic rankings dropped slightly and some of the lesser quality results moved passed us. Our snippets bring in a shit load of traffic, but they're mostly informational.

Anyone have any insight as to why our organic results would drop (still on page one, but dropped a few spots) but snippets dramatically increase?
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Looking across a bunch of SERP's this was the outcome for a lot of sites. There were a few different noticeable updates in the past 30-35 days. Core/Fred/Panda update end of Feb, Penguin related link stuff early in March around 9th - 15th, Zero SERP test on 15th onwards, then more movement in mobile.

When exactly did you start seeing a chance in featured snippets, and when exactly did your rankings for those lost terms start dropping? Might give some indication to why or just which update targeted what.
 
Around March 9th started seeing a drop in some organic keywords. Traffic is stable though, because the snippets bring in so much of it. It's confusing to me, because it seems like Featured Snippets are based on the quality of the site so it seems like organic would move up too... but, that's just speculation.
 
MichelangeSEO said:
Around March 9th started seeing a drop in some organic keywords. Traffic is stable though, because the snippets bring in so much of it. It's confusing to me, because it seems like Featured Snippets are based on the quality of the site so it seems like organic would move up too... but, that's just speculation.
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I really don't have enough data to say for sure, or know your individual circumstance, but seems that was around the time of what looks like a Penguin related change regarding links. I'd imagine that if you lost spots and your page is objectively better, then the change might have adjusted weighting to links factors. For example; they might have more aggressive anchor texts and the change favored that, or they might have more referring links to the page and the change favored that over overall links to domain. I dunno for sure because I haven't looked in toooo much detail, but if you start looking into that you might find some answers.
 
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Given that "core" or "quality" (whatever that means) updates almost always take place on the 26th - 28th, this one is right on time. Note that sometimes other updates happen simultaneously which can make it hard to decipher. These "core" updates seem to be a sudden one day spike, whereas links related updates have a ramping effect like you see around 11/01/17. Thanks to @CCarter and @eliquid you can look at these tasty graphs instead of waiting to hear what Barry copies from Twitter or here.
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I've seen a ton of new snippets in the last 4-10 days (and increasing). Unsure if it's an update, a massive clean up I did of my site (basically way less ads) or both.
 
Anyone else seeing crazy movements? As above about a week ago I gained a bunch of new snippets (from terms that were in the #4-6 position range). Well since about 3 days ago those same terms have dumped to like #60-120! I'm assuming that Google is running a bunch of different algos against my site again or something? Very strange.
 
@Darth, I've not seen anything like that on my main site, which has a pretty good spread of keywords. How is your site responding now, a couple days later? It honestly worries me, that sounds indicative of a problem somewhere to me. It could also just be your normal bouncing, especially if you made some changes in order to gain those snippets.
 
Ryuzaki said:
@Darth, I've not seen anything like that on my main site, which has a pretty good spread of keywords. How is your site responding now, a couple days later? It honestly worries me, that sounds indicative of a problem somewhere to me. It could also just be your normal bouncing, especially if you made some changes in order to gain those snippets.
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Yeah this has been my main money site, solid as a rock for several years and since the middle of last year Google has been wrecking me (see my many other threads lol). The site would never have behaved like this in the old days. Current status, about 50% of the wrecked terms are back to normal (around #6) but I lost the snippets. The other half of the terms are still #30 to #120).
 
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