How can I tell if my site was impacted by the March 2019 Core Update?
-
I am trying to determine if my website was impacted by the March 2019 Core Update. Based on the various articles I have been reading, I do not believe my niche (software) was impacted. I see a very small tick up on search console and google analytics, but it is well within the normal range. Where else should I be looking to see if we were impacted?
Thank you!
-
Great, thank you !
-
The only semi-consistent story we're seeing is some minor reversals from the August 1st update, but even that's not clear. I'd say that, if you were hit by August 1st, I'd pay closer attention, but that's about as strong a statement as I'd make.
In general, unless there's something really obvious, like an error in Google Search Console, then you're looking at traffic changes and ranking changes. Both can have not only seasonal but day-of-week and even hour-by-hour variations, so it's important to track any change over time.
In this case, it did look like the March 12 core update rolled out in 1-2 days, followed by a relatively quiet period of algorithm flux, so I don't think this is a sustained roll-out. If you were hit, you'd be seeing it by now, I suspect. That said, note that ranking changes may take longer to see, depending on how often your data is updated (we're weekly in Moz Pro).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What kind of impact does a 404 have in a sitemap regarding ranking?
We recently had a site update where our robots file disallowed our sitemap for about two weeks. When we found the problem and resubmitted the sitemap to Google Search Console, it found a 404 error. Does this have any impact on ranking or visibility if we are still recovering from the disallow?
Algorithm Updates | | GaryBlanchard0 -
Question: About Google's personalization of search results and its impact on monitoring ranking results
Given Google's personalization of search results for anyone who's logged into a Google property, how realistic and how actually meaningful/worthwhile is it to monitor one's ranking results for any keyword term these days?
Algorithm Updates | | RandallScrubs0 -
The Google Algo update that happened 1-8 is KILLING my rankings
Does anyone know what happened?? I have a great website, we ranked very highly for a slew of industry keywords, #1 in most of our top-money kws....and our keywords have been in freefall since the update. Help?!
Algorithm Updates | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Does Article Creation Still Have Good Impact On Search Engine Ranking
Hello, I have few dough regarding Article Creation and Articles Posting**.** As we know randfish has said there is no use of article marketing, many articles sites are getting penalized. **Few question ** 1) Article creation and Publishing Are Good Now Days ? 2) Does Article Creation Still Have Good Impact On Search Engine Ranking ? 3) Webmaster post one articles in different articles sites, So if we post one content in many sites does search engine doesn't look as duplicate content ? 4) One Unique Articles Has To Posted In How Many Article Directories ? Regards & Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | sumit60
Sumit0 -
Client's site dropped completely from Google - AGAIN! Please help...
ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there) Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research... in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs... He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone. Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened. We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site. They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon) There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway. SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again. We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did... AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again. So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"... Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -
Algorithm Updates | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Dedicated IP Address on my forum site www.astigtayo.com?
Hello and Good Day, Does having a dedicated IP Address to my site affect my search engine ranking? https://www.astigtayo.com
Algorithm Updates | | ificallyoumine0 -
Bing Update?
With all of the talk about Panda V2 I am just curious as to whether Bing has also updated their algorithm in the past month. I have seen some reports about the number of indexed pages dropping in half on June 10th as reported in bing's webmaster tools, as well as experiencing that drop on our websites, and a significant decrease in rankings do to them dropping some high performing pages out of their index. So Just wondering if anyone else had seen this or had any info on an algorithm update rolled out from bing. Cheers, Josh
Algorithm Updates | | prima-2535090 -
Conveying Farmer Update To Client
I work with a site that saw their super competitive top terms drop off page one with the Farmer update. So, #4 to #12.... that kinda thing. In the last year they've added a huge catalog of 500,000 item pages. The catalog has climbed to a 76% bounce rate, where as the handful of top pages is in the 20s +/-. To date, I haven't had much of anything to do with the catalog. That makes for a sitewide average bounce rate of almost 70% which has almost doubled in the past year as the catalog has ramped up. The catalog gets a ton of search traffic and sells a lot of items via that organic traffic. I'm advocating for a variety of measures, including cleaning up the catalog: 301ing out of stock pages to the homepage 301ing 100% bounce rate pages who've had hundreds/thousands of visits over time.. Improving the user experience. Offering rainchecks for out of stock items. They generally don't believe that the huge bounce rate (bad user experience stats) is hurting their top terms on their top pages. They see it as two different issues. Any thoughts on how to present evidence that the catalog is the culprit? In researching it, I found these two quotes: "In particular, it's important to note that low quality pages on one part of a site can impact the overall ranking of that site," the Google spokesman said. and... "Google spokesman told PCMag that sites that believe they have been adversely impacted should "extensively evaluate their site quality." Not only that, but the item descriptions are straight from the manufacturer, so the pages aren't that unique text-wise. Any industry standard on catalog page bounce rates? Not that it's the only possible area of SEO improvement, because it's not. I thought those quotes were pretty conclusive, but I guess not. Is there some straight-from-Google additional info to suport this? Or, am I just wrong to focus on user experience... bounce rate, pages, time on site, etc? Thanks! Mike
Algorithm Updates | | 945010