Google Search rankings appear to be getting excellent volatile again, this is alongside the hunt industry chatter that has been spiking to different levels complete the former 24 hours. As a reminder, the third-party tracking tools may motionless be struggling to track the volatility, but whenever I appearance at that, coupled alongside the industry chatter, I think we have an unconfirmed Google hunt ranking update going on.
We are all expecting the big center update to contact downward soon, many idea we'd have a center update by now, and several are expecting it afterward this month. Either way, a center update is coming shortly and perchance this is Google evaluation the waters.
We final covered an unconfirmed Google update on October 16th, which felt big. But we haven't been covering a lot of unconfirmed updates since.
As a reminder, we had the Google September 2026 spam update commencement on Thursday, September 24, 2026 at about 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. That update had three waves of volatility, in our opinion. They include:
Before that, we had unconfirmed updated about September 23/24, volatility on September 15th, afterward the weirdness alongside September 4 through 13.
So what am I seeing?
SEO Chatter
There is a lot, I mean, a lot, of chatter inside the SEO industry concerning a Google ranking update complete the former day. Here are several comments pulled from this site and WebmasterWorld:
Traffic from Search and Discover is deceased again! They’ve changed item formerly more. It’s fair ridiculous at this point. It’s been the identical item all twelvemonth long.
Yes, now deceased again... Wtf
My real-time traffic (not via GA4) is all complete the place. Jumps from 10 group to 40 people, afterward rear downward inside a few minutes' span. rinse reiterate all day
I am seeing a minor rollback traffic prudent of the update for me, not adequate to chant concerning but my CPM has increased.
Same, traffic has improved
Feel item has changed but who cares at this point
So today,, Ranking improved than ever, enormous addition in impressions ave positon is up massively but clicks downward concerning 60-70% and no update is running. Usually that benevolent of autumn would be a hit by a center or spam update but I have so many keywords ranking top 3. I conjecture overviews must have been risen in my category?
Something certainly going on today, traffic was all complete the place, conversions were awful for a Monday, worst in concerning three years.
This is really starting to get on my nerves: yesterday started alongside several Discover traffic. Not a ton, but at smallest measurable. Then, at exactly 2:00 PM, the traffic entirely wrecked again. I could exactly set my observe by it at this point. And today is another one of those days anywhere I’m genuinely wondering if Google is broken, since I’m getting nearly zero traffic from them. October is entirely ruined in conditions of revenue. Luckily, my online shop is motionless generating sales; otherwise, things would be getting earnestly difficult financially for my small business.On the flip side, the spam is getting worse and worse. The headlines and news feeds are filled alongside complete garbage. More and additional websites are blatantly violating Google's guidelines, but nobody seems to care. On top of that, my own Discover nourish has been entirely bare for days now, which is item I've never informed before.
We saw fair the opposite. At 2PM we had a big bunch of traffic. Good traffic. Converting traffic. It lone final for a few hours. Now it is rear to rubbish traffic.
Discover was gone for 3 days, and it returned, but not equal near to the old level. It's the identical matter I mentioned final time. Discover sends traffic for an hr or two, and dies. I think they changed Discover rack life, and now stories get replaced by rivals, and we need to keep producing satisfied to keep getting traffic.
I haven’t tracked that, but my traffic is up 70% complete final October. That’s all I really attention about.
That is fair a sampling of the industy chatter.
Google Tracking Tools
Like I said, several (maybe all) of the tools have been struggling to track the volatility - so keep that in mind. Many of these tools are operating this out but still.
Here is what they display this morning:
Google Volatility Chart
And individually by tool:
AWR: 
Wireboard - this study shows the total of the tools complete and parcels them on one chart: 
What are you all seeing?
Forum conversation at WebmasterWorld.
Update: Glenn Gabe posted several of what he is seeing:
Regarding the latest volatility, two sites in the identical niche entirely dropped out of the SERPs final Sunday. THESE ARE CONFIRMED DROPS. I said alongside the location owners.
They equal dropped out for brand queries. Then the two surged rear from the deceased on Friday 10/16 at 8:15PM to be exact. Yep, that's on Google's end. Just akin what we saw alongside the September 4th unconfirmed update (or glitch). Sure seems akin it could have been several category of safety algorithm that went haywire since the two sites are in an ultra-YMYL niche.
So this happened twice now complete the former duration or so. Sites entirely autumn out of the SERPs lone to surge rear from the deceased a week later. Just a heads-up if that happens to your location (or competitors). Stay tuned.
The tracking tools are not picking up the complete image btw. E.g. ahrefs sees a drop, but that's not on the correct date and doesn't display the surge rear (which is confirmed). Semrush shows the autumn and partial improvement but the dates are way off. And Sistrix shows the first autumn from September but nothing lately (which is insane since the location entirely dropped out and surged back).
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 21, 2026
