Google I/O 2026 Search Ranking Volatility & Update

Today is Google I/O, where Google announces many of its new features across its products, including Google Search. It is not uncommon to see Google search ranking volatility spike around Google I/O, and that is exactly what we are seeing today – the morning of Google I/O.

Just to be clear, Google did not announce there was an official Google search ranking update – but we cover all the unconfirmed ones as well, so that is what this is, at least so far.

As a reminder, the March 2026 core update started on March 27, 2026 and completed April 8, 2026.

Plus, the deindexing trend we wrote about early has not stopped. More and more sites are noticing a drop in indexing, the “Crawled – currently not indexed” is spiking for many.

But we did see unconfirmed updates May 13th and 14th, May 8th, April 27th and 28th, April 23rd and so on…

The last unconfirmed update kicked off May 13th, as I noted above, but it seemed to last through last Friday.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing:

Semrush:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SimilarWeb:

Zutrix:

Wincher:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

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

Accuranker:

Mozcast:

Data For SEO:

Algoroo:

Mangools (looks broken):

I wouldn’t be surprised if these tools show the volatility even more tomorrow.

SEO Chatter

I am also seeing some early chatter on this site and WebmasterWorld. Here is some of that chatter:

So after a big boost, Today the sites that got boosted are back down. I guess some kind of testing is goign on.

My site, completely dead in search, Discover, and Google News, suddenly came back to life in Google Analytics. But not in the way I wanted. Google sent hundreds of Singaporean bots to it.

Yesterday my global site’s traffic was 33%, today after half my Googleday it’s at 10% … Yep, 10% with none, as in zero, from China, and I always have genuine trade visitors from there.

Not yet another update?

Too bad 90% of the Internet are not news sites or shops. I am seeing the worst SERPs ever, the worst rankings, the worst traffic and the most bot traffic ever and it only gets worse.

Anyway, that said, I see the same, and 3 weeks ago been scrapped like never by bots (Germany) and China (Lanzhou). The quantity of bots is massive, and even running ads on facebook I receive message that are also bots…

This week situation is big sink around the 11th…

If at least bots could pay and place orders

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.