Rankings are 48% more chaotic now
Google's May update made search results 48% more volatile, meaning the same search shows different sites to different people. This matters because you can't trust a single ranking check anymore—track your position over weeks instead.
Read the whole week in one goRank trackers were wrong all week. Check Search Console.
Why your traffic moved
Search results are bouncing around more than they used to
Two people searching the same thing can now get different results more often than before. Joy Hawkins points to a Yext study that found organic results became 48% more volatile after the May 2026 update (a change to how Google ranks pages). No cause is given beyond the update itself.
Who this affects: Everyone who watches their rankings.
- Our take: judge rankings over weeks, not single-day checks.
Getting into AI answers
Your About page may be your top page in AI answers
One SEO working on a large brand's site says its most cited page in AI Overviews (the AI written answer at the top of Google) is the About page. Lily Ray says it pulled 5x more impressions than the homepage, and it is a detailed, human-written page about the company's history, not a page built for AI.
Take all that time and effort you’re spending creating special content for LLMs and use it to improve the information available to actual humans on your website.
Who this affects: Anyone who wants their business named in AI answers.
- Expand your About page: history, people, expertise, products, reputation.
- Skip building separate AI-only versions of your content.