Over the weekend, maybe started late Friday, August 16th, more noticeable on Saturday, August 17th, there may have been a rollout of another Google search ranking algorithm. It is 100% not as big as the past ones we have been covering recently but there is some chatter and some of the tools showed spikes in fluctuations this weekend.

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has some chatter, but again, it is not insane chatter but 100% more chatter than a normal day. Here is some of that chatter - again, starting mostly around August 17th

Today I don't know what happened. But all the traffic is gone including the direct and referral ones. Are you guys facing this too?

ive lost lots of traffic and close to zero conversions (and the conversions I get are just very low value ) since Thursday. After August ticking along reasonably it is like it has just been switched off. This is a regular occurrence each month now were there is a throttling of traffic and im in no doubt it is google that is responsible.

Woke up in the morning and seeing changes over both of my websites. Thanks G, they are positive. As I see — another update is rolling out. What about your websites, guys? Are you noticing the update?

As I see - no one saying they see changes. Another thing is that I've made a lot of changes last 2 weeks, so maybe this "the answer" from big G for my websites. But I still doubt on the update - the Mozcast actually shows an update.

The funny thing is, this guy "Bill Lambert" will from time to time post in the comments area telling us before an update that an update will be rolling out. He did so here on Monday, August 12th he wrote "We just had an all hands on deck meeting - Back to School update rolling out in the 24-48 hours." Well, August 16th, which was more than 48 hours after that post, something started rolling out. :)

Anyway, here are charts from the tools:

Mozcast:

SERP Metrics:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

SEMRush:

So it does look like something happened - did you notice changes in your rankings and traffic from Google organic search since around this weekend?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.