Google Search seems to be super volatile today and yesterday, so I will call this the Google I/O 2025 Google unconfirmed update. I am seeing a spike in chatter within the SEO community along with many of the tools showing super heated volatility within the Google search results.
The last time we reported on a Google ranking update were a number of unconfirmed updated, including May 16th, then May 12 and 13, May 8th (I didn't cover May 1st, I probably should have) but then it was a couple of weeks, not since April 25th and then before that, 22nd and 23rd volatility and then around April 16th and then before that around April 9th. We have yet to have second official update in 2025, we had the March 2025 core update but no other official update in 2025 - yet.
I doubt this volatility is related to the news from I/O around AI Overviews expanding and AI Mode rolling out in the U.S.
So what are we seeing?
Google Tracking Tools
Here is what the third party tracking tools are showing over the past 24 hours:
Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the recent chatter from within the SEO community on this site and WebmasterWorld over the past day or so:
they will drop a major update. Guaranteed. This is around my birthday and I know pretty much every single one in the past few years has been hell. I never enjoyed one because always had big drops or changes in the rankings.
However, these past few days have been terrible. A lot of ranking changes. Drops from both Google and Bing. Though, I'm hoping the latter of which has, now, calmed down. Google drops still seem to be ever present. Between them both I have lost -40% compared to the previous week. A lot of ranking changes and probably lost keywords. Was doing do well, this month even saw a +90% traffic increase over the previous month. Why? Because there was no ''update'' last month. We can grow so nicely when ''updates'' do not occur. Now ever since Tuesday 13th there have been traffic drops every day.
Today I see more SPAM in SERP. Super HOT day. Traffic? - No, die
Something is certain. I have seen such a sharp drop with these update news for the first time. Our traffic, which was normal at 16, decreased by about 20% from 17.
I think update is started. Google publish it today.
The past 3 days may traffic was ok, not great but ok. Since today, when the volatility is down, my traffic is down with it... I really don't know what is happening. I was in a business trip these days, with other media. Everyone reported drops in traffic and some are thinking seriously on closing their website. We are talking about websites that count 18 years and mine which is 13 years old.
Same here. Tech news and reviews website. Same drop 40-50%. News and discover traffic dropped, many articles de-indexed.
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
