Ranking volatility: what a normal week actually looks like

Rank tracking tools light up often. Some of those spikes line up with a confirmed update and most do not. Google runs experiments continuously and daily ranking data is noisy by nature.

The way to keep perspective is to look at more than one week. A log of the mid August swings is in this record, and the comparison point from earlier in the summer is the July volatility log. Side by side, they show that a couple of loud days followed by a calmer stretch is the baseline, not the exception.

Before you attribute a movement to an update, check whether the size of it is actually outside what your own site does in a quiet month.