Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update & Volatility Around July 18th

We may be seeing the start of a Google Search ranking algorithm update, as I am starting to see volatility spiking in the Google Search results and a spike in chatter within the SEO community. I know we are expecting the next core update to touch down in the coming weeks, so maybe Google is testing/evaluating something now?

The last update we covered was an unconfirmed one on July 9th and then we had a slew of weekend Google updates – all unconfirmed – before that. The good news is that we did not have huge weekend volatility this past weekend, which is out of the norm for the past couple of months.

I mentioned that this past Sunday on X:

It’s an unusually calm weekend in terms of Google ranking volatility – is this a conspiracy of sorts? (too soon?) pic.twitter.com/ssxk2VxQHU

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) July 14, 2024

That being said, we are now seeing the start of volatility, which kicked off yesterday.

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the chatter I am seeing on WebmasterWorld and on our site here:

Huge drop today… Here we go again…

I can second that…my USA traffic is -67% at 10am, and home page traffic is -77%. For whatever reason google refuses to use my home page for the serps now, and has switched to ranking interior pages on my site for high volume competitive searches. The result is I am nowhere to be found for these searches with my interior page going up against other sites’ more powerful home pages. It’s very annoying and makes no sense…my home page was fine for twenty years. My traffic now is dropping below 2023 traffic for June and July and still dropping…

Traffic to my home page has remained at -67% all day…impossible unless there is some kind of throttling or penalty. Has anyone else seen this happen with their site?

Man, seems Google is doing major stuff behind scenes today. I don’t know if it is an update. Remember how I said my niche was not touched by their stupid AI yet. Now some of the queries show AI overview on top. This is like a nightmare that never ends. haha. Every time you think you have reached rock bottom, Google twists the dagger a bit more .

major shuffling again today but it’s a Thursday but then again this entire week we have not had one day that the SERPs have been stable.

Traffic patterns are weird…

It’s already underway. It started today. Just saying.

And much more but that is just a sampling…

Google Rank Tracking Volatility Tools

Here is what the tools are showing – not all are updated yet for today, so I may come back and update some later on today:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPmetrics:

Cognitive SEO:

Semrush:

Algoroo:

Mozcast:

SERPstat:

SimilarWeb:

Accuranker:

Mangools:

Wincher:

What are all of you seeing in the past 24 hours in terms of rankings and Google organic traffic?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.