Industry News

Around December 27th and 28th we may have a Google search ranking algorithm jolt or quick tremor. I highly doubt Google pushed out something over the holidays, this last week of December. But it might just be some weird change that jolted the search results (like that even happens as I am describing).

According to recent Semrush data, this month, the month of December, was the most volatile month of the year and probably Google history. Here is a chart Mordy Oberstein of Semrush shared showing how December soared amongst the rest of the months in 2021.

Google said on Tuesday, December 21, 2021 that the December 2021 Google product reviews update is now fully rolled out. Alan Kent from Google shared this news on Twitter after I asked him for an update - he said "the Google product review update is fully rolled out."

Are you dizzy yet? The Google search results are still super volatile and we are seeing high levels of chatter spike back up over the past 24 to 48 hours and the tracking tools are also running incredibly hot. There is just so much going on right now in Google Search for an SEO that taking off for Christmas might not be an option for many.

As we reported a week ago, we saw a possible Google local search ranking update starting around a week prior to that - well, Google has now confirmed it. Google said on Twitter "Our November 2021 local search update has concluded. It began Nov 30 and ran through Dec 8. It involved a rebalancing of various factors we consider in generating local search results."

It seems like Google is having a major indexing or crawling issue this morning - again. Google seems to have not picked up on new content in the past hour or two. You can see sites like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and niche publishers like TechCrunch and The Verge are not seeing their new published content show up in the Google Search results.

Pretty much all the tools that automatically track the volatility and changes in the Google search results are still showing major volatility. It is unusual because the November core update should be long done and the product reviews update shouldn't be this volatile - or at least not at this point.

Over the past 24 hours or so, Google has sent me dozens of notices from sites I have verified Google Search Console properties with. The notices say "New Coverage issue detected" and the specific error is a "redirect error." Google said it is looking into why all these notices went out.

After many months of testing, Google has confirmed it is moving the local pack results to the top and the map on the right of those local results on desktop search. Google said the search company "expects this to be broadly available over the coming weeks."

Google may have also pushed out a local search and map algorithm and ranking update over the past week or so. There has been some recent chatter and the Bright Local RankFlux tool has been off the charts for the past couple of weeks.