There are a number of SEOs and site owners complaining that they saw a large drop in Google Search rankings yesterday, January 6, 2026. This unconfirmed Google update does not feel as widespread as some of the previous ones we reported on but I wanted to document this one as such, just in case some of you are impacted.
As a reminder, 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.
Things calmed down before the 29th of December and then things got a bit more volatile into the new year. We saw some volatility touch down around January 3rd, but it didn't feel enough for me to cover. And then around January 6th and 7th - today.
With this, we are of course seeing complaints of drops in AdSense earnings.
SEO Chatter
We are seeing chatter on this both on this site and on WebmasterWorld - here is some quotes from that chatter:
I confirm, big drop Today. Yesterday I still had an increase in impressions after EXACTLY ON MY BIRTHDAY, December 13th, Google reduced me to only 30% of traffic on several sites.
Yeah, traffic is completely done today, literally down 90% from normal. So tiring, Up one day, down the next, up again, way down the next.
Big drop today. Spam update?
I saw a traffic loss yesterday of another 7% and 16% AdSense earnings down. It always goes down never up now.
I am seeing a big drop in impressions and no changes in rankings today. Could be just a delay in reporting? Who knows, who cares. I just saw our numbers for December. That is supposed to be our 2nd best month. That's 10x less than our worst month maybe 3 years ago. It's done.
I am 90 % down in AdSense revenue.
Yesterday was really bad 6% down on main traffic RPM down, PV down 50% on ads - they done something again.
I am seeing a massive drop in my AdSense income. It has gone down 87% I might have to reduce my server to a shared server at this rate.
Tiny movement on one serp i watch, one position movement on one site!
Some slight improvement.Traffic-wise it is the first week back to work for a lot of people so that is not unusual.
Looking like down 30% YoY for December and Jan so far.
Continuing the downward trend. Down 62% from last year.
Google Tracking Tools
Here are what the tools are showing right now:
Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
What are you all seeing?
