Search results change daily — so should your SEO data. Be the first to know when there’s change on the SERP with accurate, daily keyword tracking.
It’s often said that the only constant in search is change. SEOs are no stranger to phrases like “algorithm change” or “SERP flux,” and we all expect some degree of instability in search rankings — SERPs can be fickle and it comes with the territory.
At STAT, we’re committed to daily rankings for the very reason that we don’t expect weekly ranking data to capture all the movement or deliver the full story — especially as businesses scramble to respond in the hours or days after a major update or migration.
But just how much volatility should you expect? What counts as “normal” these days?
In this post, we’ll take a look at just how much day-to-day change happens on the SERP (spoiler alert: there’s a lot), where it’s mostly taking place, why Google puts us through this, and what you can do about it.
The new normal
Our Moz colleague, Search Scientist Dr. Pete, published this chart at the start of 2023, which shows the ranking volatility of page one Google search results since 2014, where hotter temperatures represent more fluctuation.
MozCast Google Algorithm Temperatures
Things have been heating up with algorithm updates coming in hot and frequently in recent years.
A day that would have been extreme in SEO a decade ago is now totally mundane. Particularly in late 2023, we have had back-to-back documented algorithm updates from Google: Core, Helpful Content Update, Indented Results, removal of FAQs/How-To (and whatever else comes next).
Methodology
For this particular experiment, we’ve chosen to look at the first two weeks in October 2023, as it was a period of relative quiet amidst all the storminess (note that this entire 90-day period shown below would be at least orange on the above chart, and most of it deep red).
Everything is relative
While still volatile, the first half of October was more stable than any other two week period in the past 90 days.
The keyword corpus we used is the same 10,000 head terms that make up the MozCast dataset above, tracked in STAT across both desktop and smartphone device types and two suburban locations (one US-en, one GB-en). We narrowed our scope to only the top 10 organic rankings for each keyword, as these tend to be of most immediate interest to SEOs.
Over 80% of SERP positions housed multiple URLs over two weeks
The first angle we were interested in digging into was how many different URLs appear in a given SERP position, over our two-week test period. This will help show just how frequently search results are shuffling and how volatile these coveted spots in the top 10 organic results actually are.
For example, position one for the keyword [acne] on a desktop computer in the GB-en market has one distinct URL for the entire period — www.nhs.uk/conditions/acne/ holds the number one spot every single day.
However, on the US-en desktop SERP for the same keyword, two distinct URLs jostle for its number one ranking position — www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/acne/symptoms-causes/syc-20368047 and www.niams.nih.gov/health-topics/acne take turns occupying first place.
We saw a surprising amount of volatility in the number of unique results by ranking position
Almost half of the organic ranking positions housed at least four different URLs within our two-week test period.
Surprisingly, only 16.5% of ranking positions were totally consistent and kept the same URL over the two-week period. Nearly 50% of ranking positions in the top 10 housed four or more URLs.
With all that fluctuation, daily ranking data is a must in order to capture an accurate measure of organic performance and glean nuanced insights from what’s happening on the SERPs.
If you’re only seeing weekly data, you’re missing out on valuable intel — like not having any visibility when competitors may actually be creeping up on your SERPs, and stealing traffic, potential conversions, and ultimately, revenue from your business while they’re at it.
Ranking URLs are less stable as you travel down the SERP
Next, we were interested in breaking down that 16.5% statistic in the graph above. If only 16.5% of ranking positions returned totally stable URLs, did that apply consistently across each position in the top 10? Well, we checked and, apparently not.
There's more stability at the top of the SERP
It was most common to see a consistent URL reign in the first organic ranking position, and volatility continues to grow the further down the SERP you go.
As we can see in the above graph: the higher the rank, the more stable its URL. We saw fewer and fewer fully stable results the further down the top 10 we looked. Although, looking at position one, 77% being totally stable for a week means that even 23% of position one rankings change at least once a week (which still seems like quite a lot to us!).
And if we compare the volatility of each SERP position over one week to two weeks — we unsurprisingly saw fewer consistent results across the board for the longer two-week period.
This further illustrates just how much fluctuation there is on the SERPs, and we’d bet that looking at the same measurement for even longer periods of time would lead to increasingly less stable results.
What’s interesting, though, is the relative stability of position one. Perhaps this speaks to the fact that a lot of queries are somewhat navigational, so there is often one obvious answer.
Or perhaps it’s simply that a position one result can only flux in one direction. Or maybe these results are just more risky for Google to experiment with.
The fact remains that we saw the least volatility with position one, indicating that if you can manage to claw your way to the top of a SERP, your hard-won spot at the top has more staying power than those ranking below you.
Why Google makes so many changes
Google is constantly testing and making changes and improvements to its search engine — previously, we’ve heard estimates in the ballpark of seven algorithm updates per day. These help Google maintain its competitive advantage, stamp out manipulation, or introduce new features.
And sites themselves change too, of course.
If one site on a SERP gains extensive news coverage, sees a spike in search volume, is suddenly clicked on more by users, significantly improves its content, or something else that sends a strong signal to Google, that will have a ripple effect on the whole SERP. So, it really shouldn’t surprise us to see such a great deal of movement.
Get the full story with daily keyword tracking
That’s a lot of SERP volatility! The most obvious takeaway here is that weekly rank tracking, monitoring, and alerts are just not going to cut it for a lot of enterprise businesses.
Of course, weekly (or even monthly) may still be a sensible cadence for reporting to stakeholders, but SEO performance should be reported on with more than just a one-day snapshot of ranking data, as it may not be truly representative of what’s really going on on the SERPs.
At the same time, a bit of movement day to day on one keyword should not be a cause for immediate panic — it’s totally normal. If a larger segment of keywords all move in the same direction, well, then there’s cause to get excited.
The bottom line is that search results are volatile and organic rankings shift on a daily basis — you need accurate, daily rank tracking data in order to get the full picture of your organic visibility and to be able to surface strategic insights to improve your overall standing on the SERPs.
