Google November 2021 Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now

Nov 18, 2021 • 7:51 am | comments (30)by Barry Schwartz  | Filed Under Google Search Algorithm Updates

As you know, Google started to rollout the November 2021 Core Update yesterday, November 17th at around 11am ET. Below is a recap of the early chatter and data we are seeing on this update less than 24 hours after it started rolling out. Keep in mind, we expect to see more over the next several days but I wanted to share some of the early reports on the impact of this update.

There is a lot of recent chatter so far, mostly about the timing of this update but some are already reporting traffic changes, big ones, on their sites or client sites. I’ll sum up what I see in the forums and on social below in regards to what we are seeing. Also the tracking tools, many are showing big changes already – not all are – but many are.

SEO Chatter On November 2021 Core Update

It is super early to see chatter right now, I mean, you can pick up hourly changes and some are. But for news sites like this, doing that is not a good idea – this site is spiking because of the Google update news – so you can’t use charts to say I saw a lift on news sites. You need to watch those sites over numerous weeks…

But for normal sites that are not news driven, you should be able to see traffic changes quickly, if you take out any seasonality or other outliers.

We have threads at WebmasterWorldBlackHatWorldGoogle Search Central Forumscomments here on this site and others. Here is are some quotes from those threads based on this new update:

Ok, so the core update is officially being deployed. On our side, our turnover (ecommerce) has collapsed to the point where our ads budget is more important than our revenues ! 80% loss ATM …

usa here. rollout day 1 seems fairly slow and uneventful (not complaining). agree or disagree?

I can see why it’s quiet here — there is not much volatility in the SERPs, at least not yet, and not throughout the day. However, with our specific KWs and site, there was quite a bit of volatility throughout the day

Seems like this one is with a late / slow rollout.

Absolutely nothing of note yet!

SEMrush 9.2 in UK today (was only 6.0 yesterday). Brace yourselves!

10% down today compared to Last Week…

Huge drop today. I can only wait for the progress of this update…

Seems big.

I am noticing one thing very distinctively. All the spam and bot traffic that the Spam update disposed, suddenly they are coming back. Some of my sites are flooded with Chinese bot like traffic since the last the couple of hours.

130% increase after the Spam Update was over – 10 Nov. 10x decrease in overall traffic since yesterday afternoon compared to what it should be. However, can’t measure it right at this moment, I need the weekend to get a better picture. But this kind of drop never happened before. It’s true that yesterday and today are pretty much “dead” days for me, but it feels like something bad is about to happen. It’s just weird.

I am dancing like crazy

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Couple of my sites are smashed. Others are unaffected.

See big movements across my sites, mostly positive, keeping fingers crossed

Seems big – I’m down a lot.

Add me to the list of those down 30% as well. Well, at least for my biggest site. My other sites seem relatively unaffected.

About 30 percent less since 10 AM (Germany). Still moving…

So far, the chatter is somewhat limited on ranking disruption. The most chatter is on the timing of this release, which I went into in detail in my story yesterday.

Tracking Tools On November 2021 Core Update

Semrush is reporting a 9.3 – which is super high:

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Accuranker is high as well:

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Advanced Web Rankings is the highest it can go:

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Mozcast is reporting high temps:

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SERPmetrics is trending up:

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RankRanger:

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Algoroo is trending up:

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Cognitive SEO is currently calm:

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Conversion Pipeline is closely monitoring this Google update and if we see any major changes with your website’s traffic we’ll let you know.

Michael Delpierre