Google Ranking Algorithm Updates - July 2023: Volatility, Uncertainty, and Webmaster Chatter

July has been very similar to the preceding months in terms of volatility in Google search ranking. In fact, the volatility has been around, in varying degrees, since April of this year when the April 2023 reviews update came out. Before that, there was the March 2023 core update and prior to that, we had the December 2022 helpful content update. The fact that an update is now overdue is resulting in a lot of uncertainty and heated chatter from webmasters and site owners.

What Happened In July

The month began with very heated Google search results carrying over from June. By the middle of the month rank checking tools appeared to indicate that the volatility was easing off slightly and there was some hope of stability reemerging. At the same time the SEO community continued to be uncertain about the situation and the chatter emanating from there increased the uncertainty.

By the end of the month, the chatter about volatility and expected updates reached a new high. At the same time, the tracking tools continued to show that things had become calmer. This unusual conflict between what the tools show and the SEO community chatter is unusual. Anyway, by the end of the month, there was, as many people expected, no sign of any update.

What Google Tracking Tools Say

The various tracking tools all confirm the volatility, but they differ in its extent. Semrush, SERP metrics, Rank Ranger, Advanced Web Ranking, Mozcast, Algoroo and others all showed significant volatility at the beginning of July. However, they all indicated that things calmed down around the middle of the month. Expectedly, this calm was not to last and towards the end of the month the volatility was climbing again.

What Webmasters And The SEO Community Say

Impatience seems to be getting the better of site owners and webmasters. They all have been venting their frustration online and it doesn’t look like it will be stopping, or even reducing, any time soon. The problems that caused the strongest reactions were:

Sharp drops in search traffic which lasted a day or two before things returned to the now normal level of volatility.
The drops in search traffic were not limited to any geographical region but were approximately the same everywhere.
The owners of the few sites that did see a slight increase in traffic were tense because based on recent history, it was not going to last. In fact, going by previous trends, any increase is usually followed by a sharp fall.

The ongoing instability in search ranking coupled with the frustration that is emerging about the lack of clarity on the update situation is resulting in a large percentage of posts being negative. Typical of the comments being posted are:

Is anyone experiencing the same drop in traffic that I am?
Traffic in the UK is very, very slow.
After being dead all day, traffic suddenly sprang to life in the early evening. I wonder how long it will last.
Traffic is high for my sites which means someone is losing out. When my traffic drops, I wonder who gains.
Single page views today are at 78.5%. This is far above last year’s average of 47.1%. The reason is unknown.

The uncertainty of the last few months is creating a culture of negativity which, if not checked soon, could lead to other serious attitudinal issues arising. Why Google is not reacting to the situation is a matter of concern.

While an update is overdue, based on recent history, no one is certain about how and when Google will act.

Just to recap, we had mentioned two prior Google Search ranking adjustments: in May 2023 and June 2023