Google Search Ranking Update Volatility On May 3rd & 4th

I am slow to report on this but figured I’d document it just in case some of you noticed ranking volatility and fluctuations on or around May 3rd and May 4th. This is not a confirmed Google Search ranking update but there are signs of an update that touched down this past Friday.

In fact, I almost missed reporting on this until I saw Glenn Gabe shared some data he is tracking. I dug in and noticed a spike in chatter from within the SEO community around May 3rd and 4th.

Most of the tools are relatively calm around May 3rd and 4th as well.

SEO Chatter

Here is Glenn’s post on X where he said, “Impacted by the March core update? You might want to check your stats again today. After seeing a site drop on 5/3 after surging with the March core update, I checked a number of sites impacted. And yep, I’m seeing some big changes there starting on 5/3.”

Here are the full posts with images:

Just heard from another site owner seeing big changes after getting hit hard in March. See visibility trending below. Also, I saw their GSC stats for Discover, and it surged like crazy with this tremor (after flatlining with the March core update). So again, something happened on… pic.twitter.com/NYuirdsONe

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 6, 2024

Over at WebmasterWorld the chatter spiked a bit on the 4th of May but there was some chatter on May 3rd as well:

Something is going through again. Traffic dropped, and sales stopped completely with Google traffic.

I can confirm this for Germany, I spoke to a few shops earlier and they are all dead today.

I believe there is something wrong happening, my traffic has dropped by 80% in the last 24 hours without any changes or changes. There is something very strange happening right now.

I see some strange metrics as well.

A huge, disastrous drop starting this morning…traffic is at zero from 8am-10:30am so far and a sudden loss of ranking keywords. USA and Canada traffic have been abysmal since these “updates” ended, while UK, Germany, UAE and most of the rest of the world is much higher. Google has decided that USA traffic monetizes far better and is the most valuable so that is what is vanishing. I am reconciling myself to rebuilding using other platforms, but it’s going to be a very long, slow and painful process.

Traffic looking very week here too, based on the untrustworthy GA.

All traffic on my converting keywords including brand terms has been replaced right out with zombies!

Atrocious this weekend…my home page is -66% this morning at 1pm. Yesterday traffic ended up way down across the board. Today just as bad if not worse. Graduation is this weekend so some of this has to do with school finishing but certainly not all of it. Impressions have been trending downward for three months straight (solid line) now compared to the same three month period in 2023.

Google destroyed my traffic in the last 72 hours

Hey Glenn, my site also dropped on may 3rd after surging with the March core update 🤯 , well, that’s just the way things go in Google land.

— Ruben (@rubentalks) May 6, 2024

So the chatter is there but it was more spread out over the weekend.

Google Tracking Tools

Most of the tools are pretty calm and no, there are no official Google updates that would have taken place on May 3rd. But Google does push out unconfirmed update all the time.

Here are what the tools are showing:

SimilarWeb: