Possible Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

I am seeing signs of a possible Google search ranking update or volatility around January 12, 2026. This is weird in that most of the tools, not all, are mostly calm, but the chatter has picked up and many SEOs are noticing ranking fluctuations.

It is not too far off from what patterns we saw with the January 6th update.

As a reminder, we had the Google December 2025 core update kick off on December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET and ended on December 29, 2025 at around 2:05 pm ET. It had two spikes, one on December 13th and the other on December 20th.

I am reporting on this for two reasons; (1) if you are noticing weird movement over the past few days, you are not alone and (2) to see if more are noticing this Google Search voaltility.

So what am I seeing?

SEO Chatter

Let’s start with the chatter, which is honestly mostly only on this site in the comments area on this story and this story – over the past two days.

Here are some of those comments:

Shuffle is back. Traffic is very low…

Seeing the same, yesterday was horrid. Today’s looking the same as well.

Again, another way to disrupt sales traffic. I am in e-comm USA, and this is the 3rd Monday that traffic is non-existent. And this is the worst of the 3 Mondays. I’ve had 1 sale eek through today so far. Not that I can boast about sales anyway, it’s just that every time G makes adjustments, you can actually feel the sensation you’re in a ghost town instead of on the internet.

Something’s happening again. After a few days of recovery, everything is going down the drain again. Discover traffic is practically dead.

Agree it was fine few days back

Same to many of us. No stability, the difference between months is huge. Still my numbers way lower than before the July update.

crazy shuffling has returned. haha. AdSense earnings are in the toilet but this is very normal for Jan. They will go to 0 eventually since Google is systematically destroying most websites. It is hard to be even close to profitable these days, so how many continue bleeding money.

And WebmasterWorld is not so chatty about volatility but rather other topics.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing right now:

Semrush:

Wiredboard’s Aggregator of Tools – this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

Accuranker:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SimilarWeb:

Zutrix:

Algoroo:

Mozcast:

Wincher:

Mangools:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.