Google Algorithm Updates - 2022 Ongoing Discussion

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Big whopper of an update just now, the biggest that's gotten to my sites in months.

Likely Update: April 6th, 2022


Semrush Sensor:
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RankRanger:
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CognitiveSEO:
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Looking like something serious is rumbling about. I've not seen a reaction to it yet on my sites. It could be the Product Reviews update rolling out still, or perhaps a tweak to it already. Hard to say anything yet.
 
I've def seen some movement on non-product sites.
 
Im seeing gains across the board on multiple sites, I run ecomm sites tho. We also have heavy campaigns going to everything as far as link building goes, so...
 
Perplexing update.. I'm working on a mom blog scrape project, 4-5 hours a day in Ahrefs looking at histories.. not seeing uniform patterns with the April and December PRUs of 2021 and this latest. Meaning some up in last rollouts down in this and vice versa.. PRUs don't seem to have consistent impact.. Typical Googs I guess?
 
I'm seeing some pretty major gains since yesterday.
 
Looks like another update.

Noticed one of my sites seems to have rolled back to previous ranking positions pre March Google Product Reviews update.

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Looks like another update.

Noticed one of my sites seems to have rolled back to previous ranking positions pre March Google Product Reviews update.
this exactly, I saw a complete rollback on the hit I took, I took a 40% hit on previous update, this one bumped me 50%, with the 10% I assume was natural growth. Hope they don't try that again since my biggest hit was to my info content not my reviews.
 

Possible Update: May 1st, 2022

Advanced Web Ranking:
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Algoroo:
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Rank Ranger:
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Semrush:
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SERPstat:
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As usual these days, I've not had time to dig and see what's what, but I did notice one of my sites got an extra 1k sessions (which amounts to about a 16% increase).
 
Somthing must be brewing, im seeing a bunch of odd movement. Anyone else seeing anything?
 
Possible Update: May 16th

Some of these volatility trackers are showing it, some aren't. But I definitely noticed an immediate 10% boost in traffic on one of my sites:

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Google has always pushed some kind of small update daily, you know. But it seems like the ones they've been releasing lately have produced a lot more volatility. For maybe the last year and a half, it seems like they may have sub-algorithms fighting sub-algorithms or something. Everything just feels less subtle.
 
I'm seeing huge movement on two of my sites. One has dropped 75% of the keywords I'm tracking in the top 3, another has gained about 30%
 
Also seeing big movement on one of my sites. As of yesterday, down almost 41%. Site has been stable in the SERPs for years. No shady link building - haven't built any links to the site in a few years, but natural ones appear regularly. Mix of info and affiliate content - maybe 75/25 skewing towards info.

Some of the drop seems to be just changes to SERP layout for me. For my dropped keywords I'm seeing:
  • page one changing to be all big brands for product-focused keywords
  • huge increase in number of ads shown in search results to reduce number of organic results
  • double featured snippets when there used to be just one
  • featured snippet replaced with YouTube video
No penalty showing up in Search Console, but based on all the red in Ahrefs this looks like some sort of site-wide algo/penalty hit right now.
 
Also seeing big movement on one of my sites. As of yesterday, down almost 41%. Site has been stable in the SERPs for years. No shady link building - haven't built any links to the site in a few years, but natural ones appear regularly. Mix of info and affiliate content - maybe 75/25 skewing towards info.

Some of the drop seems to be just changes to SERP layout for me. For my dropped keywords I'm seeing:
  • page one changing to be all big brands for product-focused keywords
  • huge increase in number of ads shown in search results to reduce number of organic results
  • double featured snippets when there used to be just one
  • featured snippet replaced with YouTube video
No penalty showing up in Search Console, but based on all the red in Ahrefs this looks like some sort of site-wide algo/penalty hit right now.
One of my sites is seeing almost exactly this. Keywords that have been stable for years literally dropped from top 3 to 50 or worse.

The site is very clean with good metrics so very confused as to the reason for the drop.
Lost about %40-60 of traffic.

not fun…
 
Search Console delayed for anyone else?
 
I'm down more than 50% on my main site.

Agree with @blackcanary - looks like a sitewide algorithmic penalty. Our sites have for sure tripped a filter of some kind, looks a lot like the December update. It's as though the filter zero's your site's Page Rank score, many pages fall to page 2, 3, or beyond.

But some of the drops I've seen on my site are just ridiculous.

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This page dropped from #1 to not even ranking in the top 100. This page was not ranking for a commercial keyword, nor was the page monetized in any way - no ads or affiliate links.

Strange how a page on a clean site can go from being the single most relevant page for a search query, to not even being worthy of ranking inside the top 100.

A good number of pages on the site have dropped like this, none have affiliate links or ads, or anything shady going on - just clean, highly relevant, stable pages - gone, just like that.

Another solid top #5 page dropped off a cliff.

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Suppose it's time to analyse the pages that have taken the top spots and replaced my site, and see if I can figure out what has tripped this filter.
 
I would wait it out bro, give it some time (before making any changes) and see if it reverses. I havent seen anything unusual on my sites so far. "knocks on wood". I hope your guys stuff comes back.
 
I'm down more than 50% on my main site.

Agree with @blackcanary - looks like a sitewide algorithmic penalty. Our sites have for sure tripped a filter of some kind, looks a lot like the December update. It's as though the filter zero's your site's Page Rank score, many pages fall to page 2, 3, or beyond.

But some of the drops I've seen on my site are just ridiculous.

eywywer.png


This page dropped from #1 to not even ranking in the top 100. This page was not ranking for a commercial keyword, nor was the page monetized in any way - no ads or affiliate links.

Strange how a page on a clean site can go from being the single most relevant page for a search query, to not even being worthy of ranking inside the top 100.

A good number of pages on the site have dropped like this, none have affiliate links or ads, or anything shady going on - just clean, highly relevant, stable pages - gone, just like that.

Another solid top #5 page dropped off a cliff.

sdhfhdf.png


Suppose it's time to analyse the pages that have taken the top spots and replaced my site, and see if I can figure out what has tripped this filter.
@Barry this is exactly what I’m seeing. I’m going to give it a week or two.

but I agree completely, clean pages and site, nothing shady, years of Stable rankings dropping right off the SERP.

Search Console delayed for anyone else?
Wed is the last day I can see on my end.
 
@nicemkay @Taq

Are your sites that dropped affiliate sites?
Not so much. About 30% affiliate content. It did get hit with the product review update but bounced back in the last one. It's down about 70% now.

Funny though I've not seen much mention of other sites rising in the serps but I have one that is up about 30%
 
Some of the drop seems to be just changes to SERP layout for me.
I'm seeing changes based on this too. Some are referencing forum posts like 8 years old with out of date info too. Hopefully Google realises this new SERP features are not useful.
 
Whenever pages drop off completely, they usually revert back.
 
One site I track has seen around 70% traffic loss. Like others it's gone from page 1 rankings to nothing at all.

Interestingly enough, it's mostly non-commercial content that was the most heavily affected. This also happens to be the newest content on the site, or most recently updated content, some of which isn't even indexed right now... so if I was a gambling man I'd say in a week or 2 they will pop back into the index and there'll be some sort of reversion.
 
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