Barry Schwartz of Seroundtable searches a lot of site command ranking and saw a big fluctuation in ranking, before and after update.
Then he confirms the same with Google. And Gary Illyes reverted to it that it was true.
Recommendation:
When a site is impacted in a negative way by a core update, can a site command search return less relevant results for that site? I do a ton of site command searches and I’ve noticed this over the years. Maybe I am seeing things weird… asking @JohnMu or @dannysullivan
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) June 14, 2021
Gary Illyes reverted:
· site: on its own isn't directly (it's using a different, disconnected ranking path)
· site:+query is affected (it's using the normal ranking path)— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (@methode) June 14, 2021
The first example is the normal one which says- site:google.com, it might give you the results like site:google.com/folder
The second example says about exact query: site:google.com[Query Goes Here].