Weekend Ranking Turbulence Picks Up
Rankings have been moving a lot for a month now. Volatility has held in the moderate-high range since early October and stayed there almost without a break. It dipped to 6.4 on Saturday, then jumped on Sunday to a partial 7.6/10. Only 7 of 12 trackers have reported so far, and they don't agree. Serpstat and Wincher are maxed at 10/10 and SEMrush is at 9.4, while Algoroo and Advanced Web Ranking show calm readings near 3. That split often means certain niches are moving while others stay quiet.
Google hasn't confirmed anything. Search communities reported heated volatility around October 20 and 21 and again on October 24, but Google's Search Status Dashboard did not list a new update. Barry Schwartz notes that SEOs are waiting for Google to roll out the next core update. A core update is a broad change to how Google ranks pages across the web.
Those Click Spikes Are Probably Fake
If your Search Console report suddenly shows a sharp jump in clicks, don't celebrate yet. Search Engine Land reported huge spikes in clicks in the performance report and flagged it as a possible bug. Marie Haynes, writing for Search Engine Journal, goes further: "Bots, not humans, are behind it."
A Small Safety Net for Broken Pages
Gary Illyes of Google says that when an important page returns an error (a 4xx code, like "not found"), Google can "temporarily protect the URL from falling out of the index right away," meaning it will still show for a short while. That buys you a little time to fix the page. It doesn't mean errors can be ignored.
What to Do
- Check Search Console clicks against your own analytics before you report any "growth."
- Don't make big site changes based on one turbulent Sunday.
- Fix broken important pages quickly. Google's grace period is short.
