Search Ranking Volatility: Is This Connected To The Google March Update 2025?

I’ve been witnessing ranking volatility since the end of February – February 28th to be precise. 

The chatter in the industry was super high with Barry Schwartz, founder of SEO Roundtable, pointing out that the chatter has been high since 26th February, albeit the tools weren’t showing anything. 

However, since the 1st of March, the tools joined the chatter with random movement – and now we are worried! 

Initially, we presumed the ranking volatility had something to do with the approaching Google March Update. Now, I’m not sure whether the March update and this ranking volatility are connected. 

Google March Update 2025: Another Content-Focused Update On It’s Way?

While ranking volatility has certainly confused me and everyone else in the industry with its potential connection to the March update, I am still convinced that the update is going to be against using AI to ‘create.’

Google’s content guidelines strictly mention how AI should be used to ‘learn,’ not ‘create.’ The difference is stark – use artificial intelligence to learn and research, instead of creating something authentic. 

Interestingly, this is directly related to how Google AI Overviews are increasingly becoming popular – check out how Google is using AI to answer your questions in short but with direct links to original articles. Google’s AIOs directly draw answers from authentic content on the same topic, adding links to the articles beside the answer. 

What Are Google Tracking Tools Showing?

So, here are some screenshots of third-party search tracking tools, that I was able to get my hands on, thanks to SEO Roundtable:

1. Semrush:

2. SimilarWeb:

3. Mozcast:

4. Algoroo:

5. Advanced Web Rankings:

6. Accuranker:

7. Cognitive SEO:

8. Wincher:

9. Mangools:

10. Sistrix:

11. Data For SEO:

12. SERPstat:

From the above screenshots, one thing is clear – you can easily witness how the tools are displaying significant ranking volatility from the 1st of March. 

Chatter In The SEO World:

Since the end of February, the chatter in the SEO industry has not calmed down. Thanks to WebmasterWorld, here are some comments I found interesting:

1. “And the next heavy drop. The shop and news page are virtually down today, the ranking has plummeted, and Google traffic is 0 so far… So it goes on…”

2. February was a good month for me and the site. Revenue was +30% and overall traffic was +11%. Sadly all that growth has now been lost. For some reason, all of my good and popular articles have disappeared into the abyss. Ranking problems? This is funny as this article was not touched on for a good few weeks. Signs of an update maybe? It is now March. Time for good RPMs to kick in so, of course, G will capitalize on that.”

3. “Global site traffic Feb 25 was 99% of Feb 24. The second half of the month was definitely better than the first two weeks.”

4. “The traffic in the last few days was not worth a single penny.”

5. “Massive drop this morning…”

6. “Traffic is just weak in general these days…Saturday very low, Sunday very low 1st half of day, then caught up 2nd half of day…this morning very low again. Countries take turns disappearing…Canada and Australia can be -60% certain days. Same with EU countries. The whole traffic pattern feels very blocked up and unstable.”

7. “Traffic is atrocious and getting worse…yesterday search was -15%, today -20% so far. It just fell off a cliff at 9 a.m. and never recovered. All regions are participating.”

8. “Affiliate site, huge drop in the past 1-2 days. The site just recovered during the December 2024 update. My site has been hit since March 1st. It had just recovered in December 2024 after the March 2024 core update. Is there a new update, or could it be due to the 80 indexing requests we sent in the past two weeks?”