Web Top Rank

On August 22nd, Google released the August 2023 core update. We did not feel much of any volatility until a few days later, on August 25th. Then we had some movement on that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then it died down for a couple of days, picking up again a few days ago.

I am seeing new volatility signals with this August 2023 core update starting Wednesday, August 30th, through today, Friday, September 1st. The movement does not seem to be as drastic and impactful as what we saw on August 25th but there is an additional movement over the past few days.

I have to say, overall, this release seemed to be not as heated as past updates in terms of how widespread this was. I was expecting it to hit many more sites but it did not seem to.

SEO Chatter

Here is what I see in terms of SEO chatter over the past few days. These are from WebmasterWorld, BlackHatWorld and comments here:

Traffic has practically doubled in the past 48 hours.

Very interesting.

Mine has halved!

Holy... Traffic and conversion rates are superbly horrible for the past 24 hours.

For one moment I thought my websites all went offline or something.

A most unusual few days for my global site after the update with the first 4 days as follows for page views:

87.5% 85.5% 84% 84.5% and then yesterday 145% but today down again.

Absolutely dead for all sites, global site was 79.5% yesterday, our hotel venue was 54.2% and so far today after 10+ hours it's at 3.3% ... Yes, three point three percent ... More in-depth required!

Noticing some fluctuations today. Past few days have been either +10% or -11%. Not too big. Small changes. However, today I am currently experiencing a -30% to -50% drop. In comparison, I'm still +20% to +105% over last month. However, looking back to 2022 I am down by -50% to 70%.. So much for recovering.

I see a little improvement and receive better traffic (quality), I don't rely on mass for the ads, but I feel the targeted audience is better. Less impressions, like -30%, but the CTR doubled as well the inquiries. So for now it's good.

The last 3 days traffic has been ok und slightly up. But today it is down to 50% again. And needles to say traffic is rubbish, no engagement, no inquiries, no sales from google traffic.

Traffic is once again dead at the start of the day. Exactly like yesterday. But even further down compared to the previous day. It's like the site is being strangled more and more during the early hours and into the start of the afternoon. With each passing day. Thankfully the site did pick up during the afternoon yesterday but due to the morning 'strangulation' it ended up being -14%. Love G updates!

Google Search has started to roll out the second broad core update of the 2023 year, and this one is named the August 2023 broad core update. It started on August 22, 2023, at about 1:30 pm ET and as you know, can take about two weeks to roll out. I will add, this update has not yet been seen as a big update but it has only been about 12 hours since it launched.

Google wrote it, "Released the August 2023 core update. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete." Here is the tweet with the announcement:

We had an unconfirmed update this weekend where SEOs saw some big swings. Who knows, maybe that was some early testing, but I assume Google would say it is unrelated if I asked the company. We report about a lot of unconfirmed Google search ranking updates here.

So far, the update has not made too much movement in the rankings from what I am tracking. There was a lot of chatter with the unconfirmed update but so far, I am seeing not much in the form of new chatter in the past 12-hours or so. Plus the tracking tools are not showing big changes today, compared to yesterday.

We will keep an eye on this update over the coming days and keep you updated on what the SEO community is noticing. But so far, it seems to have started slowly.

Please remember that these updates can take about two weeks to roll out, and sometimes, the changes you see within the first few days are not where things stick. So be patient and wait for the roll-out to complete before panicking.

Google August 2023 Core Update Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form.