Updates

The highest volatility values in a few months have been detected and also noticed in webmaster reports. These seem to confirm a significant update, however google has not confirmed it to the date. 

SEO experts have been reporting significant changes in SERP volatility, which can be attributed to an unannounced algorithm update.

The local rankings of many businesses were affected by a significant update. The most likely reason for that seems to be the increased importance of the proximity signal.

Throughout this week Google is gradually releasing their new update called BERT. The update is suppose to improve the understanding of queries formulated in natural language.

It was announced in advance that a new algorithm change will occur on September 25th. It is very unusual for Google to pre-announce the upcoming algorithm updates, so it may mean that the update will be bigger than usual.

Google will start using stricter rules for showing reviews in search results. From now on, the reviews that only appear on a company's website will be ignored. 

There can already be observed a drop in numbers of reviews shown on Google search results.

Search results started changing and the ranks shifted in many industries. This can be a sign of a Google core algorithm update, but it was not confirmed by Google so far.

Google announced that the interpretation of nofollow links will be changed. Before, nofollow links were completely ignored and did not bring any value to a website's rank. Now, Google will decide whether or not a nofollow link should add some extra points to the ranking. 

Two extra attributes for user-generated content and sponsored content will were also introduced.

High activity was detected on August 30th, which many experts interpret as a sign of a possible new algorithm change from Google. So far there were no official comments from Google on that subject.

Google is having troubles with indexing fresh content on the web. If you depend a lot on new content (e.g. media industry, a new website) you may notice a decline in traffic these days.