2024 Updates
December 2024 Core Update — December 12, 2024
ConfirmedRight on the heels of the November Core Update, Google rolled out a short December Core Update, lasting only six days. Early reports indicated high impact. MozCast peaked at 127.0°F at the very end of the update, historically high even by 2024 standards.
November 2024 Core Update — November 11, 2024
ConfirmedThe November Core Update rolled out over 24 days. While ranking flux was high on a few days, this update crossed the US Thanksgiving holiday, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and the long timespan was difficult to disentangle.
Unnamed Update — November 5, 2024
UnconfirmedRank tracking monitors showed massive flux on Election Day in the US, with MozCast hitting 120.7°F. It's unclear whether this was a Google update or caused by the dynamic nature of the news cycle itself and corresponding content shifts.
Site Reputation Abuse #2 — September 25, 2024
ConfirmedGoogle broadened the Site Reputation Abuse manual actions, with high-profile hits on third-party content on major brands. The exact timing is unclear, but confirmed penalties began in late September and may have lasted for a few weeks.
August 2024 Core Update — August 15, 2024
ConfirmedA new Core Update officially kicked off on August 15 and rolled out over 19 days. Unfortunately, the total impact was very difficult to assess, given a multi-day overlap with a serious rankings issue. Most measurable ranking flux occurred early in the update.
Rankings Issue — August 15, 2024
ConfirmedThe Google Search Status Dashboard reported an "ongoing issue" with rankings that lasted roughly five days. This event overlapped with the August 2024 Core Update. MozCast recorded a temperature of 149.1°, the highest ranking flux we've ever measured.
AI Overviews Expansion — August 15, 2024
UnconfirmedAfter rolling out to all signed-in US searchers in May, AI Overviews began to appear in signed-out and incognito searches. The prevalence of AI Overviews for signed-out searches has continued to increase since mid-August but remains volatile.
Unnamed Update — July 30, 2024
UnconfirmedMozCast and other ranking flux tools detected about two days of high volatility, peaking at 117.4° on July 30. Google did not confirm an update or other event.
Continuous Scroll Phase-out — June 25, 2024
ConfirmedIn late June, Google announced that they would be dropping continuous scroll on desktop search results and returning to paginated results. This change had no clear impact on rankings but may have impacted click-through rates for deeper results.
June 2024 Spam Update — June 20, 2024
ConfirmedGoogle rolled out a spam update, with general guidance (no specifics), including a likely update to SpamBrain data. The rollout lasted about a week, and MozCast peaked at 117.2° on June 27, at the very tail-end of the update window.
AI Overviews Rollout — May 14, 2024
ConfirmedGoogle rolled out AI Overviews (previously the Search Generative Experience) from Google Labs to all logged-in US searchers. Immediate reactions were mixed, with people seeing more problematic answers than in previous SGE testing.
Site Reputation Abuse Penalty — May 6, 2024
ConfirmedAfter pre-announcing in March, Google took action against sites using their reputation to promote low-relevance content, such as coupon directories. Initial results were targeted, wiping out rankings for sections of major brands. Google confirmed that this first round was manual actions and is not algorithmic yet.
March 2024 Core Update — March 5, 2024
ConfirmedGoogle released another core update, which rolled out over an unprecedented 45 days! The March 2024 Core Update integrated the Helpful Content Updates (HCU) into the core algorithms, and Google claimed that the latest changes will reduce unhelpful content in search results by 40%. MozCast temperatures spiked to 120.0°F on March 8 and topped 110°F on three other days in March.
March 2024 Spam Update — March 5, 2024
ConfirmedConcurrently with the March Core Update, Google rolled out a susbtantial new spam update over about 15 days. This update included new policies targeting scaled content abuse and expired domain abuse. Reports from the SEO community suggested that a wave of manual penalties may have followed this update.
Unnamed Update — February 23, 2024
UnconfirmedMozCast and other ranking volatility trackers measured a massive spike, with MozCast hitting 120.4°F. This was the hottest day of 2024 for MozCast, and the 15th hottest day recorded by our systems over the past decade.
Indexing Bug(s) — February 1, 2024
ConfirmedGoogle reported an indexing bug starting around February 1 and lasting roughly seven days. MozCast peakes at 111.6°F on February 7. Site owners reported indexing issues prior to this, well into January, which Google may not have been aware of until later.
Ranking Bug — January 22, 2024
ConfirmedGoogle confirmed a search ranking bug where sites were disappearing from rankings, but the exact timing was unclear. MozCast peaked at 107.9°F on January 23, a couple of days after the situation was supposed to be resolved.
Unnamed Update — January 10, 2024
UnconfirmedRank-tracking tools spiked mid-week, with MozCast peaking at 111.4°F on January 10. Google did not confirm an update.