August 18 Algo Update: The Cyclone Before The Storm
Summary
While it’s easy to lump this volatility into the August Core Update, we recorded a distinct and probably unrelated event — a massive drop in indented results on page-one SERPs. Between August 17-19, the percentage of page-one Google SERPs with indented results in the MozCast 10K tracking set dropped from 24.10% to 12.04%, as shown below. Half (almost exactly 50%) of SERPs with indented results lost them over this two-day period, and that loss has not recovered as of the writing of this post. The graph below shows the percentage of page-one Google SERPs with indented results over the past 18 months. The volatility itself can be frustrating and adds to the noise of an already loud summer, but this shake-up should not impact your primary ranking for any affected SERPs.