Yes, I reported Google Search ranking volatility over this past weekend, but I am seeing a large increase in the chatter within the SEO community over the past 24 hours or so. The chatter seems consistent with a big Google Search algorithm update that is underway but at this point, Google has not yet confirmed it and may never confirm it.
But in the past day or so, the chatter really got heated. Some are saying that they are seeing big swings and reversals from the unconfirmed Google update we saw earlier this week. Some are just seeing big changes in the Google search results.
As a reminder, we saw previous unconfirmed on August 1st to 3rd and then before that it was on July 24th and then before that, we had 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.
As I said before, 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.
SEO Chatter
There is plenty of chatter in the SEO community at WebmasterWorld, Black Hat World and comments area on this site. Here are select quotes from the chatter:
Seeing massive changes this morning. Hopefully it sticks. Much more positive for us, seems like its reverting to pre July. UK
No core update but my traffic decreased more than 50%. What is wrong with Google???
When keyword rankings improved, but traffic decreased by 14%
Same here. It’s easier to report on when there are no problems at the moment.
What happened with Discover? Traffic down today.
Either tracking is broken or traffic has been turned off. I see no change in the rankings but traffic is like 50% less than yesterday. lol
Something more going on today? Significant downward movement.
I’m seeing a massive drop today starting around noon. The month started off really well for both sites, but around 12 PM today everything totally collapsed. Zero sales from Google traffic since then, and the news site is getting very little traffic.
Google seems to have the handbrake fully engaged today. No matter which site I check, they’ve all taken a massive hit—at least a 70% drop in Google traffic. Our shop is basically at a standstill, Google Ads isn’t delivering anything, and as for our news site… well, let’s not even go there. Google News is a complete trainwreck right now. Looks like another algorithm update is rolling out, or everyone at Google is just drunk today.
Seems like a core update is underway. Traffic has plummeted.
Traffic suddenly surged around 6 PM, sales skyrocketed, and it actually turned into a highly successful day in the end.As of this morning, the news site has bounced back as well, since Google is finally showing fresh articles again.
This is another Google update for sure. Whether it’s a result of the previous core algorithm changes or a new update to the system is not yet revealed. Some of my low authority sites got wiped out. They were pushed back to prioritize high authority sites. Google now started showing 3-4 related pages from each high authority site before showing one relevant result each from low authority sites in SERPs. This will probably give 10x boost to high authority sites, encouraging them to keep doing SEO for Google and spending money on ads.
Seeing similar movement on a few sites too. Hard to say if it is a confirmed update yet, but the SERP changes nd extra YouTube presence definitely feel noticeable.
I’ve noticed similar volatility lately, with some sites losing rankings while YouTube gets more visibility.
It could be algorithmic shuffling, so I’d compare SERPs, affected pages and recent site changes before assuming it’s a penalty.
Google Third-Party Tracking Tools
And here are what the tools are showing; you can see many spiked yesterday, which coincides with the industry chatter:
Wireboard – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
AWR:
Something big seems to be going on right now…
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
