There appears to be a lot of movement with Google search results the last month. Based on all the chatter, Google has been busy in the kitchen cooking up one now it appears to be a common item on the menu: The Google Algo Sandwich. Google has different types of sandwiches, but the most recent one is a little more mysterious. As best we can tell, it includes the well-documented mobile algorithm update launched on April 21, plus recent chatter of Panda, Phantom, and Doorway updates or data refreshes starting around April 26 or so. Google also dialed up their own local listings by 20-30% over the last few days. Update: Google confirms they performed a Quality Update to their core algorithm.
Based on various data points, it appears there were noticeable updates around the following dates:
- April 21: Mobile algo update (Aka Influence the Web Algo Update)
- April 25-28: ??? Quality Update, Phantom, Panda? Data refresh?
- May 3-4: Quality Update? Extended rollout?
- May 13-14: Quality Update? Extended rollout?
- May 15: Google dials up visibility of their local listings and local one-packs
I’ve seen numerous charts that look very similar to this, with some sites experiencing one or more of the trends highlighted below. Hubpages is one site that announced a 22% decline because of a recent Google update. According to SEMrush, they saw some interesting fluctuations which highlight 3 out of 5 of the potential updates or data refreshes listed above:
Here’s another example from eHow:
Not all sites saw losses and not all parts of the sandwich were poisonous. And it certainly appears that some shifts happened over different days which may indicate that it took time for some of these changes or data refreshes to roll out. Here’s an example of a winner:
