The Ranking Turmoil of Google's SERP Update Continues

Google updated their SERPs in early June, and the ranking and indexing pain of the update is still being felt by website owners as changes continue to happen.

Navneet Kaushal, a regular contributor to SearchNewz, pointed out the "aftershocks" of the Google update are still being reported in the forums, with some considerable fluctuations being noticed - months after the update.

The biggest issue for site owners seems to be consistency in terms of ranking and accordingly SEO traffic. One of the site owners shared a timeline of events for his SEO at the WebmasterWorld Forum:

June 3, Google organic drops by 30% vs. normal
June 4, Google organic traffic returns to normal
June 9, Google organic again drops by 30% vs. normal
June 17, Google organic returns to normal
June 19 , Google organic again drops by 30% vs. normal
June 27, Google organic returns to normal
July 9, Google organic again drops by 30% vs. normal
July 11, Google organic returns to normal
July 12, Google organic again drops, but this time by 80% of normal
July 13, Google organic returns to normal

As you can see, the SERPs seem to be all over the place, and he's not alone in experiencing this trend. The update has left site owners in dismay, as summed up by this post.

"the last couple of months have seen changes in the Google SERPs that defy explanation from any previous basis."

While rampant speculation about the ranking impact of Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and using Google Sitemaps has been bandied around in the forums, it is yet to be confirmed and proven whether any of these elements play a new role in Google's ranking algo.

As site owners continue to debate the cause and remedy for the Google ranking fluctations, one forum summed it up best:

"Getting and maintaining good rankings is really about watching over the health of your website, indefinitely. There's often no such thing as "set it and forget it", no magic formula that is always guaranteed to work. Of course that's business as a whole, anyway."

So if you're feeling the aftermath of the June Google SERP update - time to review your website and see whether you're SEO strategies are still relevant.