Nope, Google won't let up with its Google Search ranking volatility. We are seeing sites that are showing better rankings one day, only to see those rankings jump back up the next day and continue to see this pattern over and over again. It is like Google cannot make up its mind and it is beyond unusual to see this happening for this long of a period of time.
We saw more of the same spike this weekend, around October 19th and 20th. Yes, we have been covering ongoing Google Search ranking updates or volatility or whatever you want to call it, for the past few months. Really since the August 2023 core update.
As a reminder, we covered October 15th volatility, October 10th and then before that on October 2nd which lasted a couple of days. The Google August 2024 core update started on August 15th and officially completed on September 3rd. But it was still super volatile the day after it completed and also weeks after it completed and it has not cooled.
We saw big signals on and around September 6th, September 10th or so and maybe around September 14th. We also saw movement around September 18th, last weekend and Septmeber 25th and September 28th or so.
It is a lot, a lot for SEOs to take in and deal with.
SEO Chatter
Let's start with the chatter. As I was writing this up, Glenn Gabe was posting on X about this saying, "Yep, the volatility continues." He went on to say, "Many sites have seen surges and drops based on the crazy volatility we have seen since the August core update completed. And here we go again. And rank tracking can often be the first sign of more movement. Here's a site seeing wild fluctuations over the past month. And now surging back up again starting on 10/19. Some huge jumps in rankings."
Here is that chart:
Oh my.. this is a very interesting update.. most of sites on the move 😁 I’m seeing relevance improvements, sites are dropping for irrelevant keywords, seeing -70 -100 on keywords that were irrelevant but were showing probably because of domain authority. And positive movements…
— mr fundman (@mrfundman) October 20, 2024
Then we have chatter on this site and on WebmasterWorld kick up over the weekend. Here is some of that chatter:
Something big happening in the past 24 hours again...Like others pointed out, more news sites at the top. Sponsored content and spam sites that once disappeared in the past few quiet updates have now made a ravaging return. Some keywords have totally zero relevancy to what I'm searching for.
One of my website's rankings and all have dropped to June-July levels... Very, very bad.
It's nuts... It honestly feels like the algorithm just went rogue and everything's a mess now.
Google is also starting to worsen the results for news. If you visit topic pages in Germany, they are hopelessly outdated. Even Discoveer only displays articles that are at least 4 days old and, in addition, total nonsense (or the usual leading media). This no longer has much to do with “news”.
Very weak traffic.
Google seems to have corrected something again. Everything has returned to the way it was before the August update, and since Friday, the traffic from messages on my site has completely disappeared. Instead, spam and other nonsense now dominate the results again, and the Discover feed has been transformed into a product recommendation page for Amazon.
I mean, it is just more of the same...
Google Tracking Tools
These tracking tools are not all exploding, maybe they are just getting tired. But they are all heated and have been heated for a long long time now. Some actually readjusted their thresholds to now show red levels because it is getting a bit ridiculous now. Here is what they show:
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and X.
