SERP Volatility: What You Need to Know for Your SEO Strategies
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:44 am
This year, 2023 in particular, has been a year full of ups and downs for SEO professionals. Literally. SERP volatility and results have been up and down on Google after so many major updates from the Core Update.
As a result, many professionals end up having doubts about what to do and which strategy to adopt with so many changes.
What is SERP volatility?
Volatility is the instability in the search engine results page (SERP) and manifests itself when significant fluctuations in result positions occur over a period of time.
When volatility is high, Google rankings become chaotic and subject to constant change. On the other hand, when volatility is low, result positions remain more stable.
I even compare it to the weather in São Paulo, which can be finland whatsapp data very hot during the day, rain in the afternoon and then get hot again at night.
See how unstable the SERP has been for Rock Content over the last 30 days on the SEMRush sensor:
With the yellow points averaging 9 and above, this means that we have had a lot of instability on our website. Below, you can see the overall score and the average I mentioned over the last 30 days.
But is this instability good or bad?
It depends. And this isn't SEO talk. Just because SERPs are unstable doesn't necessarily mean that your website's page positions are bad. The changes can also be for better results. Just as positions can go down, they can also go up.
Furthermore, this volatility may also depend on other important factors: updates to Google's algorithm.
We had updates in March, April, August, September, October and November! I believe this was Google's record for most core algorithm updates. The current one, from November, is still running and should take 14 days to finalize its update, as usual.
Since we have seen updates practically every month, it is clear that this instability will be higher than normal. Another factor is also the category of your site. There are categories that may be more affected than others.
Here, despite the instability in the SERP, in October we saw a significant improvement in keywords improving their position, a much higher number than those that worsened their position.
Since May, when the most significant changes began, we have had problems with this. But as I already mentioned in this post explaining what we did to reverse the drop in traffic and keywords, we can now see the fruits being harvested.
As a result, many professionals end up having doubts about what to do and which strategy to adopt with so many changes.
What is SERP volatility?
Volatility is the instability in the search engine results page (SERP) and manifests itself when significant fluctuations in result positions occur over a period of time.
When volatility is high, Google rankings become chaotic and subject to constant change. On the other hand, when volatility is low, result positions remain more stable.
I even compare it to the weather in São Paulo, which can be finland whatsapp data very hot during the day, rain in the afternoon and then get hot again at night.
See how unstable the SERP has been for Rock Content over the last 30 days on the SEMRush sensor:
With the yellow points averaging 9 and above, this means that we have had a lot of instability on our website. Below, you can see the overall score and the average I mentioned over the last 30 days.
But is this instability good or bad?
It depends. And this isn't SEO talk. Just because SERPs are unstable doesn't necessarily mean that your website's page positions are bad. The changes can also be for better results. Just as positions can go down, they can also go up.
Furthermore, this volatility may also depend on other important factors: updates to Google's algorithm.
We had updates in March, April, August, September, October and November! I believe this was Google's record for most core algorithm updates. The current one, from November, is still running and should take 14 days to finalize its update, as usual.
Since we have seen updates practically every month, it is clear that this instability will be higher than normal. Another factor is also the category of your site. There are categories that may be more affected than others.
Here, despite the instability in the SERP, in October we saw a significant improvement in keywords improving their position, a much higher number than those that worsened their position.
Since May, when the most significant changes began, we have had problems with this. But as I already mentioned in this post explaining what we did to reverse the drop in traffic and keywords, we can now see the fruits being harvested.