As I mentioned in my Friday video, there were some rumblings kicking into gear starting late Thursday, July 23rd, and through Friday, July 24th. It seems like Google kicked some of its search ranking servers, and as a result, we are seeing an unconfirmed Google search ranking update, with a lot of volatility throughout last week, but it kicked into high gear on Friday.
I am seeing both the Google third-party tracking tools showing some increased volatility around July 24th, and the SEO community chatter spiked around the same time.
As a reminder, we saw previous unconfirmed volatility on the 18th and 19th, which honestly lasted through the week. Before that was the Google 7-Eleven update. But the last confirmed Google search ranking update was the June 2026 spam update which started on June 14 and completed on June 26. Prior to that was the Google May 2026 core update that started on May 21st and completed on June 2nd.
The sad thing is, these ranking movements continue to matter less and less for publishers because Google is sending less and less traffic to publishers. Which is why many large publishers are considering blocking Google Search from their websites completely. The exchange in value for Google crawling one’s site, to it sending traffic, has been flipped on its head.
Let’s start with the tools and then share some of the chatter on this July 24th update.
Google Tracking Tools
Notice how most of the tools are showing a spike in volatility around July 24th:
AWR:
Wireboard – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
SEO Chatter
So I am seeing chatter both at WebmasterWorld and the comments on this site. Here are some selected comments and chatter from those sources:
Absolute chaos again… One day you’re drowning in traffic, and the next day it’s a total ghost town. It’s the exact same story for both my news site and my shop. Rankings are fluctuating like crazy.
Traffic slashed on my global site today, especially this afternoon UK time.
Very, very big drop since yesterday. We are at 27% of normal traffic right now.
User engagement: Zero
It’s really brutal right now. Yesterday, for the first time since our launch, we had exactly 0 conversions on Google Ads; that has never happened before (and of course, the daily budget was fully spent anyway). As for the news site, I can confirm yesterday’s drop. Rankings are allegedly down, and traffic hit rock bottom. Today isn’t looking any better either.
Here in Brazil, the situation is this: a sharp drop in traffic of 60% to 70%!
Traffic this weekend is dead
Anyone else seeing their traffic collapse the last few days? Went from making small gains for a couple of weeks to trending down 15-25% daily. Yes, typical Google bs, but not seeing anyone mention declines.
So what are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
