Mastering SEO: Google Update May Target Ad-Heavy Content Sites

A Google ranking update first experienced last week is causing rather significant distress in the SEO community. 

The update, which started rolling out on March 8, 2017 (with the volatility continuing the last five days), seems to affect those sites that are primarily content driven and rely heavily on ad placement (like AdSense). 

Many of the automated tracking tools including ( Algooroo, SerpMetrics, Moz, AccuRanker, and RankRanger (as seen below) currently show significant fluctuations on desktop and mobile) which is almost always an indicator of an update. 

rankranger-17fred-update1


Some search engine optimization professionals are reporting incredibly significant drops over the prior week, but Google is not about to provide much in the way of details. Did you experience a rise or drop in ranking? What trends are you noticing?