Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, so I was planning on not posting anything – since most of you just want to enjoy your time with your family. But I felt I needed to (1) showcase the Thanksgiving Doodle that (2) resembles the volatility of the Google Search results with the Google November 2024 core update still not being complete before Thanksgiving and likely Black Friday.
Google has yet to post that the core update is done and no, it is not done – it is still rolling out, well after the “up to 2 weeks to complete” timeline Google has given us. Of course, we have seen these updates go long and take longer than Google expected. But no, it is not done yet and we are almost 17 days into the rollout, that is 3 days over the expected completion date.
As a reminder, the Google November 2024 core update started rolling out Monday, November 11, at 3:30 pm ET and we saw some movement begin around November 13 and 14th but it was not that widespread. Then over November 16th or so we saw much more movement and volatility. Then it calmed down over the second week of the update until November 25th and 26th and even on the 27th and 28th, today.
Thanksgiving Day Google Update SEO Chatter
That being said, I am still seeing chatter in the forums about movement, even this morning. This comes from WebmasterWorld and numerous threads at Black Hat World (which spiked in the past day or so) and on this site:
Low traffic yesterday and today. It’s not just me that assumes I’m penalized (although we have 33 sites and they all have low traffic). We have partners and collaborators, and without exception, they all complain.
Huge drop this morning…
What is Google’s actual intention here? I don’t understand the point of making it almost impossible to find small websites.
I don’t need to mention that there has been a decline again today, do I?
I had a big drop two days ago.
The Google update appears to have fully rolled out, but as of November 25, there is a spike in google search ranking volatility. It was unusually calm for the past several days but now google search is heating up, in a big way.
I am seeing quite a steep drop in traffic last few days
Low traffic yesterday and today. It’s not just me that assumes I’m penalized (although we have 33 sites and they all have low traffic). We have partners and collaborators, and without exception, they all complain.
Traffic down 20-30%. Surely, this is due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US.
Either this or google is throttling BIG time.
Throttling!! 25-35% down here 🙁
Throttling. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Will be interesting to see if there’s even a slight improvement after Black Friday. Even if there is, it’ll be short-lived though, so they can steal Xmas too.
Google Tracking Tools
I figured I’d share the charts, because – well, why not.
So while we were all hoping for this update would be completed before Thanksgiving, I think that was Google’s intent as well, it is not and there is still significant movement and volatility, likely caused by this update. I mean, the expanded site reputation abuse penalty has been out for a while, so what you have been seeing over the past few days is likely unrelated to that.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
