We got the "mobile first" e-mail quite a while ago (two or three months, maybe?), and I haven't noticed any significant changes in Google organic traffic.

Got the first mobile index notification (for about 1/3 of all websites) in July, nothing really changed there. Got the rest 2/3 yesterday, we'll have to wait and see, but I doubt anything will change, since all websites have the same content on mobile/desktop, have responsive design, etc.

Same here, @whoa182. Indexed images dropped to 2K from 8K on that same day. I'm really confused whether it's a google bug or something else is wrong :/

High SERPs Volatility again today. UK.

[edited by: BushyTop at 8:03 am (utc) on Sep 20, 2018]

High SERPs Volatility again today. UK.

Its not only UK, big shifts almost everywhere besides US.

Semrush updated for the US and it's 6.5. Not cool.

I was also recently notified about the mobile index. My guess is that this algorithm update is also related to the mobile index.

Same in South Africa.
We have no idea what it's even trying to target. We're a news site and everything is swinging wildly. All categories.

I was correct, just got my mobile-first indexing notification this morning for my main site.

I wonder how much of google SE traffic is people checking their rankings?

I wonder how much of google SE traffic is people checking their rankings?

zombies...

SUPER Zombie run happening since Monday. Seeing regular traffic but absolutely ZERO conversions. Anyone else? Look's like G's pumping up their coffers by magically sending buyers to their interests....again. They said it would get "creepy".

One more atypical day. Very low conversion and very, very, very and very low traffic. Unusual for a Thursday afternoon.

G again making their adjustments :-(

Tourism, USA

Mozcast is reporting 105 for yesterday. My traffic is now back up to pre-August 1st levels, and going strong today.

My traffic for most of this month has been really inconsistent. I like to call my traffic graph a "Stegosaurus" (up and down every hour) where it's usually a nice smooth bell curve throughout the day. I have some hours that are really not bad at all, and then the next hour will be down like 30-40% WoW. If nothing else it's consistently inconsistent.

LSS - I see those same odd patterns. Natural patterns are long gone. Its a sign of constant "traffic shaping" as tedster used to call it.

@lostshootingstar

Prior to August update I also used to see a consistent pattern of traffic each day, but now it's really inconsistent. Sometimes things look like they're returning to normal, but then what seems like a 'flick of a switch' traffic completely dies.

There's still a lot of volatility on the 1st page for many of my keywords, so perhaps this is why. I think this might sense after such a big update... Google needs to be sure that the results they're returning are good and so I'd expect it'll take a while for things to settle down.

Wednesday and Thursdays were back to August levels (better for us) as opposed to September which has been down.

Is anyone noticing something big happens "right now"?

One of my sites has pretty high traffic. Another very popular site is stagnant at zero.

USA

my traffic has dropped of a cliff today . no conversions and no one has even been on the site for the last 20 mins - i have NEVER seen that before. Thought the site was down but its not.

@Milchan

Here's the same thing. My site stayed 30 mins without a single click.

I had never seen this before. I also thought my website had down.

I had the same, earlier today, during one hour, nearly no traffic from Google at all of my sites, then it returned to normal. May be a glitch on Google's side, or may be a DDos against G's servers.

Traffic is not natural,

Here's some insight:
Sept 12: Both rankings and traffic went down.
After one week,
From Sept 19, the traffic started to climb again as well as the rankings. Take a look at this screenshot- [screenshots.firefox.com...]
This site has a very bad page speed score on Google Page Speed Insight. Mobile-first indexing not yet enabled.
In the last seven days, 90% traffic came from desktop and 9% from mobile.
So what was going on from Sept 12 to Sept 18?

I am not sure 10 or 20 visitors per day is really enough data points to draw any kind of conclusions from, unfortunately.

@lostshootingstar This is a Small business website which is targeting just a city. Well, you can't determine the issue from 10 or 20 visitors. I am just sharing.

my traffic went down this week

We've been up 3 to 5 percent for each of the past few days, which is unusual at this time of year. (Normally we see a gradual decline between late August and mid- to late December.) Nothing jumps out at me, so if something is happening with Google's search results, it's pretty subtle.

Traffic has been behaving VERY odd this week. Hot two days, frozen three days, hot again for a day and now dead. Some else is happening. Very long delays on pages loading. Even my Roku is stuttering on 100Mbps service. Just seems like someone is throwing a monkey wrench in there to slow things down. Wonder who?