January has been an insane month with Google Search ranking volatility, and I guess it is no surprise to see the most heated time right now, as we end the month. I am seeing a significant spike in SEO chatter and many of the tools are showing very heated Google search ranking volatility over the past 24 hours or so.
I am surprised Google has not announced an official Google search ranking update yet, based on all the volatility we have seen. But maybe we are all imaganing it...
To catch you up quickly, I covered a number of unconfirmed Google search ranking updates including around January 26th/27th, then January 21st, January 15th, January 12th and January 6th. Prior to that, we had the Google December 2025 core update kick off on December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET and ended on December 29, 2025 at around 2:05 pm ET. It had two spikes, one on December 13th and the other on December 20th.
Google Tracking Tools
Let's start with what the tools have been tracking:
Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
SEO Chatter
The chatter is still heated both here in the comments and also on WebmasterWorld. Here is just a sampling of those comments:
Speaking of current ranking/traffic trends - keywords are sliding and traffic is sliding even more.
I got the feeling that there might be an unconfirmed update since yesterday. Big swings in rankings, slightly mismatched traffic and affiliate sales are down. For me, this was always the sign for rotation in SERPs or update. Semrush Sensor is also showing heated vola.
Yeah, there’s a Google update rolling out. According to the Semrush Sensor, volatility is extremely high right now. So welcome to the roller coaster, buckle up, it’s going downhill.
Google hasn’t announced anything, but since every tool is lighting up, it’s pretty clearly an update.
It feels like an update. But we are seeing bad traffic since 3 days. Got worse from yesterday to now.Sales are down again.
After a significant drop, I notice that in the last 7 days, almost 50% of the traffic that brings me money from Google is actually BING. This means that Google is regressing and Microsoft is gaining ground.
Really seeing a major drop in rankings and traffic since Jan 27, which aligns with Gemini 3 becoming the default model for AI Overviews globally. The continued SERP volatility appears to be driven by ongoing algorithm adjustments, AI-driven search tests, and increased competition, resulting in highly unpredictable ranking and traffic fluctuations.
It's getting worse every day. Soon traffic will be 0.
That is just some of the chatter.
Google has been busy. Although unconfirmed, the volatility recently has caused a ton of movement across some sites. Again, Google can always release "smaller core updates" where they update a system, or several, outside of a broad core update. And those can have a big impact on… https://t.co/DaTd2wKZdb pic.twitter.com/p0b1Vdpnah
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 30, 2026
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
