This weekend I am seeing a spike in chatter within the SEO community on the topic of, you guessed it, Google search ranking volatility. Truth is, it really has not calmed down and the heated Google search results have been ongoing for about 6 weeks now but this weekend, I saw a spike in the SEO chatter.
As a reminder, the June 2025 core update started on June 30th, completed early on Thursday, July 17, 2025 but the volatility remained heated throughout even today. When Google's June 2025 core update was announced, we didn't see much of any volatility. But then we saw volatility touch down on July 2nd. Then on July 10th we reported on folks noticing partial recoveries from previous core updates and helpful content updates (again, not everyone). And then, even four days after the core update completed, the volatility was heated throughout and it still has not calmed down - even over weeks later. The last time we covered this ongoing volatility was August 6th.
We seem to be in a constant flux of Google ranking updates.
That being said, what are we seeing from the weekend?
Google Tracking Third Party Tools
Here is what the third-party tools are showing, as you can see, it has been heated a very long time:
Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
SEO Chatter
Most of the chatter started Sunday, August 10th. Here is some of that chatter across WebmasterWorld and this site:
Big drop again and record low traffic levels.
Main global site traffic reduction started my Friday afternoon and all day Saturday resulting in a 60% reduction with it continuing today, Sunday. mid-afternoon and at 25%Meanwhile ... Local UK hotel venue had its highest day of 2025 yesterday with today already above average.
Massive bot hit yesterday from France on one of my smaller specialist global sites.
After having a banner day yesterday, today's traffic is beyond disappointing and Sundays are usually my best days. It's still early, but I'm thinking I fell for the trap again, seeing improvements and then the rug pull.My sites are not huge, but I notice trends. My solution to G traffic variations is better use of social media, primarily X, Gab, and truthsocial (though that one sucks a lot). AI will continue to be a PITA until it all eventually fails, which it is currently in the process of doing.
The traffic drop continues, back to pre core update levels and trending down further. What's going on?
After a good weekend today started with -70%. The pages that now get traffic are itmes didn´t sell for years or just low price items. All our main pages didn´t get one visit from google users the last 12 hours.
Another dramatic shift. Yesterday evening. Big moves all over. This update never stops.
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
