The early September ranking crash has fully reversed

The unannounced Google ranking change that hit some sites around September 4 has now reversed. Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) described it as a wild Google Search ranking update around 9/4 followed by a complete reversal around 9/13. For most affected sites, that means the week ended roughly where it began.

We covered the drops when they happened and the earlier signs that traffic was coming back. This is the tidy ending. The dip and the rebound were both Google moving things around on its side, not something that broke on your website.

Google never confirmed any of it

Google did not announce the September 4 shift and did not announce the reversal either. That makes this what SEOs call an unconfirmed update, meaning rankings clearly moved but Google never named a change or explained it. Nobody outside Google knows what was being tested or fixed.

That matters because an unconfirmed update is the easiest thing in the world to misread. When traffic falls for a week, it is tempting to assume you did something wrong, rewrite pages in a panic, or undo work that was fine. In this case the numbers came back on their own.

What to do

If your Google traffic fell in early September and has since recovered, do nothing. Open Google Search Console, click Performance, set the date range to the last three months, and check whether your clicks are back near where they sat in late August. If the line has returned to normal, close the tab and get on with your week.

If your traffic dropped and has not come back, treat that as a separate problem. A site-wide reversal that lifted other sites but not yours points at something on your end rather than at the September swing, so look at your own pages and how useful they are rather than waiting for another reversal to save you.

Barry Schwartz

@rustybrick

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Wild Google Search ranking update hits for some around 9/4 but then a complete reversal around 9/13