This SEO Content Goblin is a little confused? Maybe Concerned? Something strange is going on with the SERPs and rankings and I am not quite sure what, if anything to make of it.
Look at the volatility below from a few of the SERP Volatility indexes recently.....
All show big spikes end of November 2023 through the first week of December 2023. Yes - Google did announce the end of the November 2023 Broad Core Algorithm Update and the Reviews update is still going on...but this volatility is quite high and SEO Industry Chatter is mirroring this.
Looking at a few of my client sites I am seeing weird AVG Position Declines in Google Search Console late last week and over the weekend into this week. A really drastic spike down - this aligns with the SERP Volatility. What is weird is this is across eCommerce and B2B sites and across industry types. Is this a reporting issue? Google did have some weird outages last week - which is in itself unusual and that comes amid them making a bunch of reporting changes in the last week or two to GSC with updates to structured data and video reporting, and removing mobile usability report, etc.
Recently SEO Industry folks, myself included, also have noticed that FAQ and HowTo Featured Snippets are coming back again, albeit slowly., and not to the level they were before Google announced FAQs and HowTo rich results would not dispaly anymore. It seems they are back?
Lastly, the Google's lab experiment for their SGE Experiment and SGE While Browsing was/is supposed to end in December 2023? And Google did announce their Gemini Generative AI Model today (December 6).
As an SEO I would be warry - and interested in seeing if any major announcements come out from Google. Sometime "things" "changes" "Updates" from Google rollout slowly, limited, and then they announce something big like a an algorithm update, new system, or make changes to the SERP (new feature added or removed, whatever), or something with SGE.
My spidey sense is activated and my eye-brows raised with some of the things I am seeing and would not be surprised of a major announcement from Google sometime "soon."
Could it be SGE going live to all users in the wild? A major shake-up to the SERP? All of the above?
SEO Content Goblins sure have been busy this year - and Google is keeping us on our toes and making Organic Search harder - and I don't expect that to change in 2024.
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