Data providers: Google November 2024 core update was less volatile

Google’sNovember 2024 core updatestarted on November 11, 2024 and completed about 24 days later on December 5, 2024. Every core update that Google confirms, by definition, means that the ranking changes from the core update should be visible enough for Google to announce it. But with the last core update, the November core update, it seemed to have less of an impact than some previous core updates that Google released over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, if a site is impacted by a core update, it can result in a huge change for that site’s search visibility. But it seems like this update was not as big as previous core updates, according to the data providers we asked.

Manual actions during. Also, to stir things up with the data, Google expanded its site reputation abuse policy during the time Google was rolling out this November 2024 core update. That led to a nice number of large and small websites being hit by a manual action (Google search penalty), resulting in some cases, a lot of visibility losses for those sites in Google Search.

That being said, here is what we found regarding this last Google core update.

Data providers on the Google November 2024 core update

Semrush. Semrush (our parent company) was the first to send us data where the data seemed to show that the August 2024 core update was more volatile than the November 2024 core update. But as Mordy Obserstein, a company spokesperson, told us, the data was messy, like it was for the August core update.

What is messy data? Well, the volatility prior to the core update was high, which makes analyzing these updates hard.

Here is a chart from Semrush’s sensor that tracks volatility over the past 30 days or so – note the Google logo around November 11th for when the Google update started – it completed on December 5th:

“As with the August 2024 Core Update, this update saw an extensive period of veryhigh levels of rank volatility proceed it. This makes analyzing the updaterelative to its preceding baseline period almost impossible,” Mordy Obserstein told us.

You can see it here in the levels of rank volatilityas compared to the immediate period the preceded the update. This shows ranking was noticeably less volatile as a whole during the update. This was similar to the August core update.

Now, if you look at the peak volatility by industry, you can see the August core update was much more volatile. In fact, the November core update seemed relatively calm, without having any days have a score of 9.0 or higher. “Not a single vertical cracked “9” on the Semrush Sensor scale aside from the News niche – which is always intensely volatile (as opposed to 8 during the August 2024 core update),” Mordy Obserstein told me.

Here is another chart that shows this November core update was less volatile than the August core update, it shows that the average positions gained or lost was slightly lower:

Then when you look at the percentage of new URLs ranking in the top 10 that prior to the update didn’t even rank in the top 20:

Similarweb.SimilarWeb’sSERP Seismometerreally didn’t report any massive spikes throughout the rollout of the November core update. “We see that there were no obvious spikes in fluctuations that we commonly see during core updates,” Shay Harel from Similarweb told us. This is really not what we would typically experience during a core update:

Similarweb sent us a chart showing the average volatility for each core update (almost all of them), comparing each one to each other and this November 2024 core update was the weakest of them all:

Zooming in and comparing the August 2024 core update to the November 2024 core update, you see this even clearer:

Now, when you compare the ranking changes between the top 3, top 5, and top 10 search results, the November update showed significantly lower fluctuations in the top 3 results. However, fluctuations were slightly higher in the top 5 results compared to the August update:

Then, Similarweb dug in by niche or vertical and found there were fewer fluctuations in the top 3 and top 5 results within the health niche. The finance niche also experienced lower fluctuations in the top 3 results. In contrast, the Travel industry showed higher levels of fluctuations across all positions.

Other tools.There are a lot of Google search ranking volatility tools. Here is what they looked like after the core update finished rolling out and over the course of the update:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Cognitive SEO:

Algoroo:

SERPstat:

Accuranker:

Mangools:

Wincher:

Mozcast:

Sistrix:

seoClarity:

Industry.Based on what I’ve been tracking, this update started to be felt a couple of days after it was announced onNovember 13th and 14th, and then seemed to hit a wider set of sites this past weekend, aroundNovember 16th and 17th. Towards the end of this update, many of the tracking tools showed relatively low ranking volatility but then we saw a large spike in volatility aroundNovember 25th and 26th. We even saw significant movement over the pastfew days, in early December. We thought this update would be done before the Black Friday shopping season, but it was not completed beforehand and well into the following week.

The funny thing, we saw search volatility spike post core update, over this past weekend.

What to do if you are hit.Google hasgiven adviceon what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. Google has not really given much new advice here.

• There aren’t specific actions to take to recover. A negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.
• Google has offered a list ofquestions to consider if your site is hit by a core update.
• Google said you can see a bit of arecovery between core updatesbut the biggest change would be after another core update.

In short, write helpful content for people and not to rank in search engines.

• “There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading ourcreating helpful, reliable, people-first contenthelp page,” Google said previously.

More on Google updates

You can read more of our coverage in Search Engine Land’sGoogle Algorithm Updates history.

Why we care.While the data above shows how sites in general are doing with the last core update, it does not represent how your individual site did with the update. If your site was hit by this past update, it can be devastating. If you were hit by previous updates and so no improvement with this update, then again, devastating once again. But some sites saw big improvements.

Feel free to compare this to our August core update report.

We hope you saw improvements.

The above is the detailed content of Data providers: Google November 2024 core update was less volatile. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!