Don't Celebrate That Search Console Spike Yet
If your Search Console report suddenly shows a big jump in clicks, don't get excited yet. Since around November 3, many site owners have reported that Google Search Console's performance report is showing a weird spike in clicks for some sites over the past couple of days. Search Engine Land saw it on its own sites and thinks this may be a bug in the tool. Odder still, in some profiles, the API shows the spike, but the web interface directly on Search Console does not show the spike in clicks.
There's also an easy way to check. One site owner reported 5x clicks over a weekend and wondered whether rank-tracking tools were behind it, noting the clicks don't seem to have translated to actual traffic on site. Compare your Search Console numbers with your analytics. If visits and sales stayed flat, the jump is probably a reporting error, not real growth.
Google Clarifies "Not Indexed" Pages
In a quieter but useful change, Google rewrote its help page for the "Crawled - currently not indexed" status. That's the label for pages Google visited but chose not to add to search results. It now says Google doesn't index all pages, this is a common message, it doesn't necessarily indicate an issue. In short, don't panic over a few of these. A large share of them can still point to thin or duplicate content.
Rankings Stay Restless
Rankings have been unsettled for a full month, with scores mostly between 6 and 8 out of 10 since early October. Today's early score of 7.5 is in line with that, and the trend is flat. The tracking tools disagree, though: Serpstat and Wincher show maximum turbulence while SimilarWeb reads calm. That split points to churn in specific niches rather than one big sitewide shake-up.
What to Do
- Check Search Console click spikes against your analytics before reporting them as wins.
- Note the spike dates now so you can explain them later if Google confirms a bug.
- Look at "not indexed" pages only if important pages are on the list.
