I’ve been watching the chatter in the SEO industry, and honestly, it hasn’t calmed down much since my last report for the period of June 8-12. The Google search results seem more heated today, and there appears to be an unconfirmed Google search ranking update underway.
This week has been weird, in terms of Google Search ranking volatility. The volatility seems to have extended from this past weekend, throughout most, if not all, of this week.
Earlier this month, the Google May 2026 core update was completed on June 2, 2026. But the volatility has not seemed to calm down.
Google’s May 2026 broad core update has officially completed rolling out. Google announced this via X this morning and the Search Status Dashboard has been updated to document the rollout. It took less than 12 days to roll out, and this update felt larger than the last core update – the Google March 2026 core update.
Just when I thought the Google search volatility would start to cool, I am seeing another spike in huge search ranking volatility today – June 2nd…
The Google May 2026 core update seemed to have hit some sites in a very big way yesterday, Saturday, May 30, 2026. As a reminder, the May 2026 core update was announced on May 21, 2026, and then that following weekend, we saw some significant ranking volatility, and then again, this past weekend, we saw even more volatility.
Gary Illyes from Google reportedly said at the Search Central Live Shanghai 2026 event on May 15th that he and Google strongly warns against buying or manipulating mentions brand mentions to try to show up in the AI responses, AI Overviews and AI Mode.
As you know, Google announced the May 2026 core update on Thursday afternoon and it didn’t take long for the update to be felt by the SEO community. Many, not all, but many, started to feel the impact of this core update over the weekend.
Google officially announced the rollout of the May 2026 core update just now, on Thursday at around 11:43 am ET. This core update is expected to take about 2 weeks to roll out. Google said this “is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”
Today is Google I/O, where Google announces many of its new features across its products, including Google Search. It is not uncommon to see Google search ranking volatility spike around Google I/O, and that is exactly what we are seeing today – the morning of Google I/O.