Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update February 7th and 8th

I am seeing signs of a new Google search ranking algorithm update brewing. It started yesterday, Wednesday, February 7th, and is going into today, Thursday, February 8th. There is an increase in chatter within the SEO industry and also some, not all, of the tools are showing spikes in volatility.

This is all while we expecting a big search quality improvement in the near future and we have been waiting for this since last November. That being said, the last unconfirmed update we reported on was on January 23-24th. We have not covered an update since then, and there were times I reported on an update every weekend.

So what we are seeing?

SEO Chatter

Let’s start with the SEO chatter, what the SEO community is saying, over at WebmasterWorld. The chatter spiked yesterday, here are some select quotes:

This is my third day of “normal” traffic with the USA for February so far at +35.7% !.!.!

Very high traffic here also for three days. Mostly non-usa traffic, usa is just at break even. No new sales though, only spam

Our UVs and pageviews have been climbing gradually over the past several weeks (using week-over-week and year-over-year comparisons each day), but yesterday was down a bit from last week and today is looking about the same.

After averaging about 50 percent below last year, we’ve had several days when paveviews were down only 38 or 39 percent from last year. Talk about an era of diminished expectations!

Something has changed because this week I have already received more genuine business inquiries than the whole of January, none from the USA, which is not unusual, however more encouraging than recent months. What is significant is that all the inquiries are for widgets for which we are very strong and well-known.

We’re hitting all time highs today! I hope this momentum keeps up!

I’m happy for some people here that traffic is picking up again. My traffic from Google has been since about 5pm. … well, disappeared.

Massive drop in keywords yesterday and today, according to my Semrush and Ahrefs. Highest I’ve seen since at least the beginning of November.

One of my posts, which used to rank in the top five, has now dropped to the third page. It seems like LinkedIn Pulse posts and low-quality forum posts are ranking higher than my quality content.

Is it me or is anyone noticing massive movements today on their own site?

Not massive (yet) but definitely some movement upwards. Nothing dramatic as of yet, but hoping it stays on course. It’s at least better than the nothing it’s been for months.

That is a sampling, there are also a ton of comments on my last story.

Google Tracking Tools:

Here are what the tracking tools are showing, some are not yet updated for the day, so I may come in later today and update some of these charts. Some are now trending up, but some show the volatility already.

Semrush: