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Below are the most recent 30 comments. I try to keep it clean of comment spam, but some times things get through and it takes me several hours to get to it. So please excuse any of that comment spam.

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Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

I think he must be a spy I read Barrys article about him - and all reference from twitter and john have been deleted.

Comment ID #6824832844 01/17/2026 04:14 am

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

All Barrys links have disappeared on his article about him. Maybe he was a spy after all. All the twitter posts about him have also been deleted.

Comment ID #6824832472 01/17/2026 04:13 am

Taryn White commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

I remember that too. I just don't recall if anything ever came of anyone trying to figure out his deal.

Comment ID #6824752102 01/16/2026 08:34 pm

DataDonkey commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

I only remember him predicting updates and one or two hit, but he's the only one I can think of. I remember Barry checking his IP addresses too because of the mystery surrounding that guy.

Comment ID #6824750940 01/16/2026 08:30 pm

Taryn White commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

That has to be who he's talking about.

Comment ID #6824750161 01/16/2026 08:27 pm

DataDonkey commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

You're not talking about that Bill Lambert guy are you?

Comment ID #6824748346 01/16/2026 08:21 pm

MrSEO commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

He was like an insider, he was pretty big on here then he vanished this was long before the helpful content updates. Trying to remember his user name

Comment ID #6824696873 01/16/2026 05:32 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Black hats are celebrating apparently. LLM's don't hit their categories.

Comment ID #6824680525 01/16/2026 04:49 pm

Hunar commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Wouldn't surprise me at all, literally all i see ranking for everything is Parasites, Spam and hacked sites. For almost every keyword I track.

Comment ID #6824678291 01/16/2026 04:43 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

If they are doing deals with some publishers and not others that strengthens the argument that they should NOT exist. I am actually finding ChatGTP (which I am using for personal reasons to help me with documents relating to my car) pretty useless. They will go out of business when AI crashes. The ads won't be enough to keep them afloat they only have 1 million users a week (tiny)

Comment ID #6824675188 01/16/2026 04:36 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Bing is not looking that bad they just need to make co-pilot optional then they will be real competition, right now they just copying google UI

Comment ID #6824671915 01/16/2026 04:28 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

I am sorry I hope in Q2 March 26 AI overviews is turned off.

Comment ID #6824669479 01/16/2026 04:23 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

I hope he comes back. Was it me as I saw AI overviews in a publisher conference a year before they launched

Comment ID #6824668755 01/16/2026 04:21 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

That's my feeling right now.

Comment ID #6824668076 01/16/2026 04:20 pm

Sam commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

My friend does black hat and he said hes having the time of his life and making more than ever. Around $25k a month off casino affiliates. I obviously don't do that or go down that road and I don't like black hat strategy. I have always been white hat but he also said that when he went to a conference the white hat were really stressed and depressed - when he went to a similar conference in black hat they were really happy making tons. Just sums up guys we seem to be in a bad position because we do the right thing of making human content for the world. So wrong for us.

Comment ID #6824666638 01/16/2026 04:16 pm

John A. User commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Precisely, OpenAI is losing so much money that ads is its only salvation. It might hurt Google but do nothing for publishers. Yes agree with your assessment on Brinkema, she'll use it to cop out. I see Microsoft are apparently pushing their own Adsense soon so Google will seize on that also.

Comment ID #6824657877 01/16/2026 03:56 pm

Zolux commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Lot of shuffling in my niche...

Comment ID #6824654802 01/16/2026 03:49 pm

Dan commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Yeh.. my exact reaction when I wake up. I've lost everything, basically overnight. Seems like news publishers got VERY hard, I can certainly say I'm one of them. Without course correction I don't know what I'm going to do. Sleepless nights here.

Comment ID #6824653987 01/16/2026 03:47 pm

Renan Ferrer commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

HOLY FUCK!

Comment ID #6824653032 01/16/2026 03:45 pm

UncleKrusty commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

True, but this is a market force that has the potential to eat into Google's ad revenue. I know many of us, in particular Sam, want Google to suffer for what they did to us. HOWEVER, this could be part of a plan to convince Judge Brinkema to go easy on Google for the ad remedies just like Judge Mehta did for search. I wouldn't be surprised if Google and OpenAI would do this because there's a lot of coordination going on between the scenes with these companies. For example, it was just announced Wikimedia entered into undisclosed deals with other AI companies last year. <blockquote>In addition to the previously announced partnership with Google in 2022, the organization shared publicly for the first time that it has formed other partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity over the past year. Other partnerships, like Ecosia, Pleias, and ProRata, have been mentioned before but are also included in this announcement, along with Nomic and Reef Media.</blockquote>

Comment ID #6824645133 01/16/2026 03:27 pm

Charles Piano commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

There’s been no movement on my website yet with this new Google Search Volatility update, so hopefully it didn’t impact us much.

Comment ID #6824637993 01/16/2026 03:11 pm

Dan commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

You're not alone; it looks like news publishers got hit hard. I'm down to well over 98%, dropping from tens of thousands of clicks per day to barely 50 now.

Comment ID #6824628688 01/16/2026 02:51 pm

Dan commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

I was in Discover for years, setting record traffic levels each month, and was wiped overnight by the most recent core update.

Comment ID #6824628278 01/16/2026 02:50 pm

Dan commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d042432ccd7ea35ff9a1c5e0002a560105052e2b3bf4fdbba61a9ae3a476b1e5.png Yeah, it's over. Flatlined following the December core update across everything. Search, Image, Discover, News and more. Can't be affected by Volatility when your traffic is at zero. News publisher here. Everything gone overnight. Have no idea how I can keep a roof above my family's heads now.

Comment ID #6824627823 01/16/2026 02:49 pm

John A. User commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Yep, making money from stolen content...

Comment ID #6824617222 01/16/2026 02:27 pm

Dimitris Abrazis commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Since the volatility on 12th discover dropped and news traffic is gone. I really don;t know what the hell is going on and this is driving me mad. We had some great articles these days and no traffic. All this week it is BAD.

Comment ID #6824610296 01/16/2026 02:12 pm

Rasmus Hellmyrs commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Looks like your site has disappeared from Top Stories, Discover and so on, right? It also don't seem to rank in the first page on the News tab what I can see? Do you still have any traffic at all from Discover?

Comment ID #6824593527 01/16/2026 01:40 pm

n1lss commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

We got absolutely rekt on Jan 6th, but nothing noticeable from this one.

Comment ID #6824591031 01/16/2026 01:35 pm

MrSEO commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Whatever happend to that sooth sayer a few years ago, that foretold the prophecy of googles greed and how they were going to destroy sites. I can't remember his user name. but he was on here for a few months spilling the beans. It looks liek everythign came true.

Comment ID #6824584619 01/16/2026 01:23 pm

Dark Red Owl commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 15-16

Next week I will lay off 5 people I have been with for 20 years. Together we created the site. For several years it was in first place in the country, almost always in the top 5. The last update kicked us out of Google Discover. We spoke via video link with a Google representative. He didn't see anything wrong with the site, except that it was old.

Comment ID #6824582356 01/16/2026 01:19 pm

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