It has been an uneasy start to 2024 for some webmasters and SEOs as they try to identify the causes for significant ranking fluctuations.
Close observation suggests that Google may be shifting from visibly aggressive penalties to gradual and calculated reductions over a period of weeks. Could Google be exercising a continual crawl link based devaluation?
Let’s take a look back at January:
17th-18th January – Webmasters noticed significant fluctuations in rankings. There was industry talk of a possible update on the 17th/18th January, although Google did not confirm this.
22nd – 23rd January – Google announced a Panda #24 data refresh on 22nd January with no new ranking signals. Claims 1.2% queries were affected.
27th-28th January – Another big hit to rankings that Google has not admitted to.
Google launches over 500 algorithmic changes per year, so there are always small changes rolling out.
What Are We Seeing?
Over the past few weeks, we have been seeing signs that Google is devaluing links almost like a real time update.
The Penguin update targets low quality links and over-optimisation including over-use of anchor text and other excessive optimisation techniques. Previously, it was almost guaranteed, if a site built thousands of links with identical anchor text, it would be hit by Penguin.
It now seems that you don’t need to be guilty of over-optimisation in order to be affected. Even 4 anchor text links that are really poor now appear to have been devalued individually. It would seem that Google is devaluing them in a live situation. We think Google may now be tackling the links themselves, based on the quality of individual links regardless of the anchor text signal.
Although our tests are yet to be conclusive, the Google algorithm seems to be at point where it is continuously going through valuing links on a much greater scale than ever before.
Don’t Blame the Penguin!
Initially, many suspected that these devaluations could be the result of Penguin rolled out in real time. However, it has since been confirmed by Google that it was not Penguin. Google confirmed that the Penguin Algorithm is not refreshed regularly like the Panda algorithm and that there have been no Penguin updates since the last confirmed one 4.5 months ago.
As a result, John Mueller’s video is likely referring to “link analysis” refreshes, not the Penguin algorithm. This falls in line with our theory that it is live link devaluation that is occuring.