Google Search Ranking Volatility Melting

Vernon August 15, 2024

0 3 minutes read

Google is still at it, maybe it is angry again about the possibility of it being broken up by the DOJ after being ruled a monopoly. But in all seriousness, the search ranking volatility is super heating, almost combusting. The chatter is still super heated and many of the tools are showing extreme volatility. This started yesterday and is heating up even more today.

We are still waiting for the next Google ranking update, specifically that new core update that should be it is coming soon and was only weeks away…

As a reminder, this week we had volatility over the weekend and then last week we reported on volatility on August 6th and then we had that bursting Google volatility around July 31st, the previous two weeks have been incredibly volatile and also July 23rd, then before that was July 18th and then July 9th we saw big movement from Google Search.

Yep, and still no September 2023 helpful content update recoveries from what I can see.

Google Rank Tracking Volatility Tools

Let’s start with what the tools are showing and most are showing big movement:

Semrush:

SimilarWeb:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SEO Chatter

The folks on this site in the past 24 hours and on WebmasterWorld are noticing a lot of volatility in the past couple of days.

Anyone noticed the past 24 hours’ fluctuation is showing weird sites ranking at the top?

I’m seeing wordpress.com spams, irrelevant authority/big sites ranking, new sponsored content sites, .etc.

It seems that they’ve doubled-down on website’s metrics and favouring big publishers again to the point parasite SEO and irrelevant content from big sites are dominating once more.

I fear this could already be the ‘quick preview’ of the upcoming core update – big sites win once more. If so, we can close shop, pack our genitals and go home.

It all seems completely random.

No pattern to the rankings. Nothing to work towards.

Not sure whats wrong with the SERP today, typing USA google or Google USA was displaying me some weird links, but then I refreshed and then again I got the correct link, seems something is going on again. SERPs have turned into garbage dumps these days regardless the search query, nothing surprising.

Massive traffic drop I witnessed since 12th but it doesnt affect me anymore. The heart has grown strong against a pattern.

A sudden and quote large drop in ranking of top 3 and top 10 ranking terms on desktop over the last four days or so. A lesser drop for mobile, but still significant.

That is coming after weeks of rapid increases in the number of top 3/10 ranking terms. In the past I found that it usually happens in 6 month cycles, but now the gaining/losing of top ranking terms seems to be happening much faster. Since ~ July 20th a gradual upward trend in traffic which hasn’t reverted yet. Despite losing these terms my traffic isn’t dropping much.

None of this is a normal summer pattern for me. Usually traffic drops in June when all the students are out and rapidly increases again in September. To me that would imply that my June and July traffic was just much lower than it should have been….

Does anyone here experiencing deindexing, but not all pages. It just started this month. I’m worried right now. How can I fix this. By the way, I’m on a blogspot platform, so recommendations about Wordpress/hosting will not be much of help.

Yes! That has happened to many of my newer and smaller websites. Google just removed pages from their search results. I use google search on my sites and they even removed the results from internal site search results, which is strange to me. I am looking for a search alternative search engine to use on my websites…if anyone has suggestions.

Today I saw numerous more examples of tutorial sites that have been obliterated. The writing is on the wall for anything that is like a summary of something already on the internet. Google has a no AI policy even though they claim AI is fine to use.

seems like some big shuffling is going on but I am in so much trouble, I have completely stopped caring about the rankings now. crazy how life changes.

@rustybrick I am seeing some ranking fluctuations in Google today. Is there anyone else seeing this?

— Alex Mungo (@gomungoseo) August 15, 2024

And just to show how much they were down ALREADY, here are screenshots of trending over time for two of those sites. Hard to believe they dropped more recently. I hope the next core update resolves some of this for sites that have improved. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/bpo005e6iN

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 13, 2024