There has a been a small increase in volatility in the SERP Trackers on the 9th of May 2019 indicating that a minor Google Update has been rolled out.
Despite some chatter in the SEO community, the update does not appear to be impacting many webmasters.
Google has also confirmed that it wasn’t a core update.
SERP Trackers show increased volatility
The SERP Trackers show increased volatility around the 8-10th May, 2019, although the significance of the update does vary between trackers.
Let’s take a look at the SERP trackers:
SEMrush Sensor:
The SEMrush Sensor shows a small increase in volatility between the 8th and 10th of May.
Rank Risk Index:
The Rank Risk Index tracker also shows a spike between the 8th and 10th of May.
MozCast:
The MozCast weather report shows a significant spike on the 8th and 9th of May, strongly indicating an update has taken place.
Algoroo:
The Algoroo report shows a minimal increase in SERP volatility on the 9th of May 2019. The volatility shown is much less than the other trackers.
SERPMetrics:
The SERPMetrics report shows an increase in volatility starting on the 8th of May.
Google confirms no Core Update to Google Search
Google confirmed to Search Engine Land no new Core update has been released.
Google has previously confirmed that they release one or more changes to their search algorithms on most day.
Here’s an update about updates -- updates to our search algorithms. As explained before, each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Most have little noticeable change but help us continue to incrementally improve search….
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 11, 2018
Chatter in the SEO Community
Let’s take a look at the discussions on WebmasterWorld for this update.
The comments started late in the day on the 9th of May and continued into the 10th of May. It is difficult to say how significant the impact is, but of those affected, it would appear that they have lost around 15 - 30% of their traffic.
Anyone notice a change in traffic on the 9th or was it just me? (BangkokBaby)
@BangkokBaby me too. All day traffic become high at unusual times and fell during the regular time. (seomotionz)
Seeing big fluctuations in serps. another update? (Mr_Dok)
Yes, I am seeing the same thing since late yesterday evening, they seem to be going from bad to worse, I am suspecting something to do with links again. The reason I say this is because I have one PBN that after the August update shot to page one for several keywords (and remained there). In April, it went to page 4-5 and as of yesterday its been climbing back up, now sitting on page 1 again as it was before. (southernguy)
Had a big drop ~15% in traffic - could just be seasonal… (KaseyM)
Big drop 20%. (jayjay123)
@jayjay123 I am looking at about 30%. (seomotionz)
I also am experiencing a big drop today in traffic, zero conversions also. Seems like there was an update again of some sort for sure. Seeing some strange patterns earlier also were by I get a block of visitors , then nothing for 5 mins, block of visitors, then nothing for 5 mins - continuing like this for some time but with pretty much the exact period in between. really weird. Something else I just saw was about the new Faq and How To markup and that google now has a facility for people that do not have a website to upload How Tos and Q&As to google for them to use in the SERPs. If that results in an army of people doing that , like the likes of wikipedia have, then that will have an even greater effect on web sites especially if they decide to favor this non linked content. (Milchan)
Any updates about an algorithm change? My website has 30% less traffic and semrush is reporting a lot of (bad) changes. (jayjay123)
Definitely seeing a drop in traffic starting yesterday but much worse today. (paulphin)
Just checked today, I got affected with huge traffic down and SERP ranking also has gone from 3rd position to directly 9-10th position. Do you also affect the same?. (karan)