I've been pretty quiet on posting reports Google updates recently, in fact, I have not posted about one since late August. But while most sites seem calm in the Google rankings, there was definitely some sort of ranking blip around September 4th, and in some cases, the September 4th impact reverted on September 13th. It is super weird.
Glenn Gabe has been following a number of large sites that saw a big impact around September 3rd and into September 4th. But the crazy thing is, yesterday, he noticed that for some of those sites that were impacted by the September 4th unconfirmed Google update, the impact was completely reversed on September 13th.
Here is his chart from X showing this:
He wrote, "A number of the sites that fell off a cliff around 9/4 completely surged back yesterday. They dropped heavily in Search and some in Discover as well. The recovery is wild... See one below. And note, this has happened in the past..."
I should note that these are not just search visibility drops based on this third-party tool. The actual site above saw a real drop and then a real reversal in its first-party analytics and data.
Here are those posts:
Welcome to Google Land. A quick update on the huge drops I reported yesterday. A number of the sites that fell off a cliff around 9/4 completely surged back yesterday. They dropped heavily in Search and some in Discover as well. The recovery is wild... See one below. And note,… https://t.co/CW3wJulcvY pic.twitter.com/Iutc6MwxHL
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 13, 2026
The folks at WebmasterWorld are chattering about this, one said:
That would be one explanation, but we can only guess. Edit: However, it seems like things are starting to move again. Yesterday afternoon, my Discover traffic started picking up, and early this morning (Sunday) is looking good too. On top of that, my private Discover feed looks a lot more normal today.
Hey, my Discover is coming back too! Started around Saturday/Sunday. Stories are no longer getting "dropped" off. I'm now down like 20%, but that's okay. Not brutal anymore, and it'll probably get betterDelayed console doesn't help tbh
If you look at the aggregate volatility chart, you will see that September 4th was more volatile than the rest:
Google Volatility Chart
But the chatter has been pretty calm, which again makes you feel the will of the SEO community is dwindling at clicks from Google Search continue to dwindle for them.
Have any of you noticed these patterns around September 3rd and 4th and then a reversal of this scale around September 13th?
Forum discussion at X.
