Google may have quietly rolled out an update on Friday, June 19th, that seems to may have impacted more of the black hat SEO side of things. It is not 100% clear because most of the tools seem pretty stable and yes there is chatter also in the more "white hat" forums, but I see a much larger spike in chatter in the more "black hat" forums.
As a reminder, we most recently saw Google ranking movement last week and also June 8-12. Before that, we had the Google May 2026 core update was completed on June 2, 2026. With that core update we saw significant volatility on May 21, 2026, and then that following weekend, we saw some significant ranking volatility, and then again, this past weekend, we saw even more volatility. Finally, on the last day of the core update, Tuesday - June 2, 2026 right before Google said the update was done, we saw even more volatility.
SEO Chatter
So what am I hearing from the SEO community? Like I said, it is not just at WebmasterWorld or on this site but there is a lot of chatter on Black Hat World. Here are some quotes from those forums:
We are experiencing a -30% hit in traffic since Friday. Anyone else feel like there is a huge update happening? Since the beginning of June we've been getting good gains but last Friday it's like a continuous downturn.
I know someone who said the same thing.
We are also facing same, noticed around 25% down traffic numbers.
Saw some volatility on my end too starting late Thursday. Mostly on my informational sites, commercial intent seems stable for now.
You are definitely not alone, bro—there is a huge wave of unconfirmed algorithmic volatility right now and tons of webmasters are reporting identical 30-50% traffic collapses that started smack on last Friday.
It seems that something is going on again. Traffic to the shop has virtually come to a complete standstill, and the news site is just limping along. Other websites are also reporting today that they are receiving little to no traffic from Google.
Have email spammers been laid off? It must be the weekend since I only received three (3) spams this morning !After 11.5 hrs my global site is at 10% of average, most likely this in-depth site will be replaced from 1st July with a much lighter site containing possibly 10& of the information. Precisely what has to be decided however simply leaving this out there for occasional fleeting visitors is no longer tolerable.
It just seems to me this unconfirmed Google search ranking update impacted more of the black hat side of things?
Google Tracking Tools
Here is what the third-party Google search tracking tools show:
Google Volatility Chart
Wireboard - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
AWR:
What are you all seeing? Is this more black hat focused?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
