Ranking swings got worse again, with no explanation
Barry Schwartz says the movement is heating up, and he will not say whether the cause is bad tracking data or Google.
Google ranking volatility is still climbing. Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) says the movement "continues to get more heated by the day" and offers two possibilities without picking one, that the data is poisoned or that Google is brewing something. Google has not confirmed any update.
What that actually means
Volatility is a measure of how much search results are shuffling around. Tracking tools check where pages rank each day and report how far things moved. When that number spikes, SEOs usually assume Google changed something.
The word "poisoned" points at the tools themselves. If the results being collected are not what real people see, the tools will report a storm that is not happening. That question has been running for a while, and we covered one tracker's own explanation of its bad data earlier.
The other option is the plain one. Google rolls out changes before it announces them, and sometimes it never announces them at all. Right now nobody outside Google knows which explanation is right, and Schwartz is not claiming to know either.
What you should do
If your rank tracker is showing drops, do not act on it yet. A tool that is reading the wrong results will show you a loss that never happened, and rebuilding pages to chase a phantom drop is wasted work.
Check your own numbers instead. Open Google Search Console, go to Performance, set the date range to compare the last 7 days against the previous 7 days, and look at clicks and impressions for your main pages. That data comes from Google, not from a third party guessing at the results page. If clicks are flat, nothing has happened to you, whatever your tracker says.
If clicks really are down, give it time before you change anything. Unconfirmed movement often settles on its own within days, and there is nothing specific to fix because there is no announced update to respond to.
For most small sites the honest answer this week is do nothing. Keep publishing pages that answer a real question properly, watch Search Console once or twice this week, and wait for Google to either confirm something or stay quiet.
is it poisoned or is Google brewing something
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.