I am seeing new signs of the Google search ranking volatility heating up. When I reported on it last week, the tools began to show volatility trend upwards. But now, while some of the tools are calm, the chatter within the forums has spiked over the past 24 hours or so.
This might be the start of something or it might just be typical Google. Always hard to say but 90% of the time, these don’t end up being confirmed by Google.
As a reminder, the March 2026 core update started on March 27, 2026 and completed April 8, 2026.
SEO Chatter
So here is the chatter over the past day or so at WebmasterWorld:
Lowest traffic today. Someone pulled the plug?
This morning I had to check all my email addresses were working since the only thing I had received were 6 spams … This afternoon genuine mails started coming through but not the volume I am used to … Strange.
They get it worse with every update.
That’s really strange. The shop has been recovering since Sunday. But the news site is acting very oddly. Visitor numbers are rising slightly again, but according to Sistrix, the ranking has dropped by more than half and seems to be falling further. Only the ranking for the main keywords is okay, but Discover has been severely throttled. That’s really strange, because up until Wednesday, Discover alone was generating record numbers.
I really don’t understand what Google is up to again.
Wednesday appears to have been a blip. Site traffic is now consistent with recent weeks.
Same here, getting less Google traffic and drastically reduced conversions for a couple of days. GSC was stuck without refresh for 32 hours, too, which used to signal they allocated compute for something more important in the past.
Traffic seems slightly better by now, but still weird compared to two weeks ago.
If something changes within seconds, it is clearly not weather or anything else. It is Google.
Google Tracking Tools
Here are what the tools are showing:
Semrush:
Advanced Web Rankings:
Wincher:
Zutrix:
Accuranker:
Sistrix:
Mangools:
SimilarWeb:
Wiredboard’s Aggregator of Tools – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
Mozcast:
Data For SEO:
Algoroo:
SERPstat:
So what are you all seeing over the past day or so?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
