March 11th Google Search Ranking Update Weirdness

For the past few days I have been debating if I should cover what may have been a Google search ranking update that ticked off on Friday March 11th. There was super unusual update like chatter in the WebmasterWorld forums but the automated tracking tools showed nothing – nada.

So I waited and waited and it seems like whatever happened on March 11th that went through the weekend, may have reverted itself on Monday, March 14th. Like I said, I was on the verge of reporting a possible unconfirmed Google update but held back.

Now, what I am asking, is if you saw some really weird Google update like patterns for the sites you track on Friday, March 11th and then it flip back on Monday, March 14th?

SEO Chatter

Let me first start by sharing the chatter I saw over the past few days, starting off on Friday, March 11th. Again, keep in mind, this chatter looks just like what you’d expect to see from the SEO forums during a Google update. But it didn’t last and something seemed to revert over time.

Absolutely massive 30% drop in search and 41% drop in direct traffic by 5:30pm today. USA -43%, UK -53%, even India is down -36% and that is never down. Anyone else seeing this?

The massive traffic drop continues….down 60% for both USA and UK at 11:30am. Search is down 51%. My ranking is heading higher across the board for the last week

Drop since Thursday.

My global site’s traffic was well down on Friday at 71%, Saturday was average and Sunday well above average resulting in the first 13 days at 100% !.!.! Today has started well with a notable increase in Eastern European traffic and realworld enquiries have started again.

UK-focussed sites are generally on average with the busiest one actually at 106.5% at the moment and, interestingly, it is also trading much higher than usual for this time of year. This is a traditional B&M business not an online trader.

15% downturn at the weekend; looks like it started on 10th/11th (UK informational site with lots of UGC as well as editorial)

So I then followed up the other day to ask about the status and most said it was a weird blip on Friday?

For me yes, Monday was 100.3% which is higher than a regular Monday but obviously within my weekday average.

I’m not seeing much movement within my established / evergreen website SERPs however new pages and especially so new sites seem to be almost impossible to gain any traction whatsoever and this has been on-going for far too long.

They’re not sandboxed simply kept behind to force ad sales IMHO.

Yes it lasted almost 2 days but now back to normal. Search traffic is much higher and direct is lower now…something definitely happened.

On my side, only today I see a big drop. The last weekend was of good gains. But today it all came crashing down.

Anyway, you can probably see why I held off on covering this.

Google Tracking Tools

So with this weird chatter, as I shared above, combined with the tools showing unusually lower volatility than ever before – like really low levels of movement – it just seemed weird and unusual. Can low volatility be a sign of an update? Probably not.

Here are some of the charts I track, notice the 11th forward, how calm everything is trending.

Semrush:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mozcast:

Accuranker:

So what do you think happened?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.