Google Search rankings seem to be getting super volatile again, this is alongside the search industry chatter that has been spiking to unusual levels over the past 24 hours. As a reminder, the third-party tracking tools may still be struggling to track the volatility, but when I look at that, coupled with the industry chatter, I think we have an unconfirmed Google search ranking update going on.
We are all expecting the big core update to touch down soon, many thought we'd have a core update by now, and some are expecting it later this month. Either way, a core update is coming soon and maybe this is Google testing the waters.
We last covered an unconfirmed Google update on October 16th, which felt big. But we haven't been covering a lot of unconfirmed updates since.
As a reminder, we had the Google September 2026 spam update start on Thursday, September 24, 2026 at around 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. That update had three waves of volatility, in our opinion. They include:
Before that, we had unconfirmed updated around September 23/24, volatility on September 15th, then the weirdness with September 4 through 13.
So what am I seeing?
SEO Chatter
There is a lot, I mean, a lot, of chatter within the SEO industry about a Google ranking update over the past day. Here are some comments pulled from this site and WebmasterWorld:
Traffic from Search and Discover is dead again! They’ve changed something once more. It’s just ridiculous at this point. It’s been the same thing all year long.
Yes, now dead again... Wtf
My real-time traffic (not via GA4) is all over the place. Jumps from 10 people to 40 people, then back down within a few minutes' span. rinse repeat all day
I am seeing a slight rollback traffic wise of the update for me, not enough to sing about but my CPM has increased.
Same, traffic has improved
Feel something has changed but who cares at this point
So today,, Ranking better than ever, massive increase in impressions ave positon is up massively but clicks down about 60-70% and no update is running. Usually that kind of drop would be a hit by a core or spam update but I have so many keywords ranking top 3. I guess overviews must have been increased in my category?
Something definitely going on today, traffic was all over the place, conversions were terrible for a Monday, worst in about three years.
This is really starting to get on my nerves: yesterday started with some Discover traffic. Not a ton, but at least measurable. Then, at exactly 2:00 PM, the traffic completely crashed again. I could literally set my watch by it at this point. And today is another one of those days where I’m genuinely wondering if Google is broken, because I’m getting almost zero traffic from them. October is completely ruined in terms of revenue. Luckily, my online shop is still generating sales; otherwise, things would be getting seriously difficult financially for my small business.On the flip side, the spam is getting worse and worse. The headlines and news feeds are filled with absolute garbage. More and more websites are blatantly violating Google's guidelines, but nobody seems to care. On top of that, my own Discover feed has been completely empty for days now, which is something I've never experienced before.
We saw just the opposite. At 2PM we had a big bunch of traffic. Good traffic. Converting traffic. It only last for a few hours. Now it is back to rubbish traffic.
Discover was gone for 3 days, and it returned, but not even close to the old level. It's the same issue I mentioned last time. Discover sends traffic for an hour or two, and dies. I think they changed Discover shelf life, and now stories get replaced by rivals, and we need to keep producing content to keep getting traffic.
I haven’t tracked that, but my traffic is up 70% over last October. That’s all I really care about.
That is just a sampling of the industy chatter.
Google Tracking Tools
Like I said, some (maybe all) of the tools have been struggling to track the volatility - so keep that in mind. Many of these tools are working this out but still.
Here is what they show this morning:
Google Volatility Chart
And individually by tool:
AWR:
Wireboard - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: Glenn Gabe posted some of what he is seeing:
Regarding the recent volatility, two sites in the same niche completely dropped out of the SERPs last Sunday. THESE ARE CONFIRMED DROPS. I spoke with the site owners.
They even dropped out for brand queries. Then both surged back from the dead on Friday 10/16 at 8:15PM to be exact. Yep, that's on Google's end. Just like what we saw with the September 4th unconfirmed update (or glitch). Sure seems like it could have been some type of security algorithm that went haywire since both sites are in an ultra-YMYL niche.
So this happened twice now over the past month or so. Sites completely drop out of the SERPs only to surge back from the dead a week later. Just a heads-up if that happens to your site (or competitors). Stay tuned.
The tracking tools are not picking up the entire picture btw. E.g. ahrefs sees a drop, but that's not on the right date and doesn't show the surge back (which is confirmed). Semrush shows the drop and partial recovery but the dates are way off. And Sistrix shows the original drop from September but nothing recently (which is crazy since the site completely dropped out and surged back).
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 21, 2026
