Last Updated on August 20, 2020
Since August 10, 2020, a lot of chatter appeared midday regarding a major Google Search ranking algorithm. While there has been no official confirmation from Google’s Search Liaison, there is a lot of noise among the SEO and search community.
From what it has been brought to our notice, it doesn’t look good.
From multiple sources, it looks like the Google Update began to roll out at around 2 pm ET on the 10th August. For the most significant ranking changes there seem to be no clear algorithm pattern, making the update look more like a bug or a bad algorithm test.
As a result of this Google Core update, authoritative and successful sites ranking on page one, seem to have tanked in rankings.
August 10th Google Update – What effects are noticed so far
Speaking of the effect on various industries across the locations, it is still early to predict what industries are most affected by this core update. On various communities, people have reported their websites being outranked by forum posts, dynamically generated amazon listings, and random Facebook posts.
At this point, nobody is sure what is happening, but from what we can tell out of observation an algorithmic adjustment of the search engine rankings is causing poor-quality pages to gain top-10 rankings.
Even in local search results, small businesses are completely being outranked by Amazon, eBay and directory websites.
Ecommerce websites are affected badly as well, losing their rankings to directory, forums and social media listings.
Reactions from the SEO community
While a handful of webmasters have reported being benefited from the August 10, 2020, Google Core Update, the majority are reporting on a brutal blow to the rankings and traffic.
It makes no sense why the Google first page is being filled with unrelated forums and cloaking websites. From such faulty and low-quality top-ranking pages, it would seem that this update is an enormous glitch or bug.
@rustybrick there's an update per 10 Aug, seems like a big-impact update on SERP @seroundtable @sejournal
— Zev (@trezevoir) August 10, 2020
@rustybrick huge update going on in Italy and other European countries, seems like Google applied a filter to exclude affiliates and small shops from serps. 1st page made by amazon+ebay+news sites. Hope this is a test / bug.
— Matteo Giannone (@matteogiannone) August 10, 2020
This has got to be a bug right? pic.twitter.com/EUzZLOwSID
— ミント (@minto_seo) August 10, 2020
Stay Tuned with SeoEaze for regular updated
While the present Google Update has little information and official confirmation available, we continue to monitor the changes taking place. We will keep you posted till the update is fully rolled out and keep giving you important updates.
Post Updated on August 20, 2020
It is now official that the Google Search Ranking rampage of August 10 was a major algorithmic glitch.
Here’s a graph of how our rankings were affected during this period. You can see there was a short-lived spike in our search rankings that were soon adjusted back to the pre-glitch level.
John Mueller of Google admitted that it was a glitch and not a rumbling of a significant core update. Here’s his Twitter update:
I don't have all the details yet, but it seems like this was a glitch on our side and has been fixed in the meantime.
If someone could fix the other 2020-issues, that would be great.
— ? John ? (@JohnMu) August 11, 2020
He tweeted:
“I don’t have all the details yet, but it seems like this was a glitch on our side and has been fixed in the meantime.”