There are a lot of things going on right now that can cause your traffic to be disrupted. What I've covered below:
There is presently a rollout of the December link spam upgrade.
The rollout of the December helpful content upgrade is currently underway.
There is irrational random volatility, and many websites are experiencing unexpected traffic losses.
Google changes from 2022 and dates of significant SERP turbulence: December 2022
Google released the December 2022 Link Spam Update on December 14, 2022.
now uses SpamBrain for links can identify websites receiving unnatural links as well as websites referring to unnatural sites
Will render those links' effects ineffective (as opposed to penalizing for them)
Rollout will take two weeks.
Google said that starting on December 6, 2022, subjects will appear in search results as filter bubbles.
30 November 2022 The December 2022 Helpful Content Update is already available and will roll out over the course of up to two weeks. There has been little impact reported as of December 14. However, with so much going on with Google's search results at the moment, it can be challenging for websites to determine if they have been affected.
Google search results for US searches in English are now continuous scroll (no individual pages) on desktop as of
4 December 2022 The public might now access OpenAI's ChatGPT this week. I've already used it numerous times to conduct searches for which I would often use Google. I anticipate a decline in site visitors overall.
Nov. 20, 2022
No update has been announced for November 15, 2022.
3 November 2022 Ranking changes are a topic of much online discussion. Numerous owners of specialty websites have seen some profits.
On November 1st, 2022, Google included a Lens search option from the desktop homepage. Sites that rely on picture search may be impacted by this.
Oct. 20, 2022
Google released the October 2022 spam upgrade on October 19–21, 2022. They provided a link to a document outlining SpamBrain, their AI spam filtering program. Spam Brain is adept at combating "behaviors that aim to narrowly escape breaching [their] quality requirements, but are still manipulative in nature," according to the authors. One of the instances mentioned is being able to tell whether product reviews are actually hands-on evaluations or just updated product descriptions. Numerous sites were severely damaged by this upgrade. As of November 7, I believe that this modification was caused by SpamBrain being more adept at recognizing content that violates Google's quality standards. This filter might be removed by disavowing. Read more here.
October 18, 2022 - There was no officially declared update, but several of the sites we watch saw enormous gains, and we have heard rumors of sites suffering significant losses. Some claim that Google's index has far fewer pages now. It's possible that Google changed the way it indexes information. Or perhaps Google's helpful content classifier is at work here.
September 12, 2022
Released the September 2022 core update. The rollout could take 2 weeks to complete.
August 25, 2022:
Google’s helpful content update is live! It was preannounced last week. So far, the Semrush sensor is not reporting any significant SERP turbulence. We anticipate this will be a very large and impactful change in the SEO world.
May 2022 Core Update Releasing for Google Search
Several times per year, we make substantial improvements to our overall ranking processes, which we refer to as core updates. Core updates are designed to increase the overall relevancy of our search results and make them more helpful and useful for everyone. Today, we're releasing our May 2022 core update. It will take about 1-2 weeks to fully roll out.
The November 16th 2021 Confrimed
Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.
July 2021 Core Update — July 1, 2021
Confirmed
A follow-up to the June Core Update, the July 2021 Core Update rolled out from July 1-12. Peak volatility on MozCast hit 102.7°F on July 1st, but we saw temperatures in the 90s on July 5th, 8th, and 11th. Like most Core Updates, Google was light on specifics.