Google search rating algorithm Jolt on December twenty seventh & twenty eighth?

Around December 27th and 28th, we may have a jolt or a rapid tremor in the Google search ranking algorithm. I highly doubt that Google got anything out over the holidays this last week of December. But it could just be some strange change that messed up the search results (as it even happens as I describe it).

There has been an increase in SEO chatter in the WebmasterWorld Forums that started December 26th through December 28th and some, but not all, of Google’s automated tracking tools started displaying abnormalities around December 27th and 28th. It’s not uncommon for Google’s search results to fluctuate without Google manually pushing an algorithm update, but that jolt appears to be stronger than normal fluctuations. Maybe it was a weird bottleneck or something, I have no idea.

SEO chatter

Here’s some of the chatter from the forums and social networks:

Our Google traffic and totals have increased noticeably over the past few days, which is frankly surprising for an international travel planning site. The growth is in line with our usual pre-COVID traffic pattern: a low for the year before Christmas, followed by a slow but steady increase towards our annual summer high from Christmas or New Years. I’m also pleasantly surprised, Christmas / New Years has always been the quietest time of the year on our sites but the last 3 days have been 37.0%, 54.7% and yesterday 63.3%. I spoke too early … traffic was normal until noon then fell off a cliff for the rest of the day … UK was -40% at the end of the day. I now see these steep drops almost every day. Traffic will appear normal until it drops to 0-1 per hour for hours. This is what my UK traffic looks like this month: I’m getting a lot of traffic from all over the world right now. It’s been happening since morning.

I don’t know if my G Real-Time has gone crazy or if it’s actually happening.

I have an increase of over 5,000%.

Does anyone see anything strange today?

Not me … a 79% decrease in homepage traffic today … search is down 51%. Both the USA and the UK lost 45-48% at 1:00 p.m., Canada by 67%, Australia not yet visited, and Western Europe almost nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it in my 17 years. All I can think of is that it has to be some kind of penalty as my ranking keeps dropping this month … soon there will be nothing left. I’m also seeing an increase in organic traffic today and expect an overall increase of around 10% towards the end of the day compared to yesterday. The traffic seems regular. Since most of this website is informative in nature, there are no direct conversions, but we’ll see what the partners have to say over the next few days or weeks. Legitimate traffic. AdSense with high conversion. USA and Europe is the majority. It started this morning. As always, it never takes more than 1 hour. Today it goes all day. I hope it stays that way. Yes, I have achieved top positions in several terms in office. This usually appears for 1 hour when it happens. Today it lasts all day. I hope this is permanent. If it wasn’t an update, my website has finally outperformed my competitors … Today I see so much junk traffic it feels like buyers forgot google exits, everyone started shopping on Amazon or something!

Is another Google update / adjustment being carried out? I am seeing some volatility in my rankings and the trackers seem to be pretty hot @rustybrick @glenngabe

– Sunny | Media type (@ mediamogul21) December 28, 2021