It happens to the best of us. Your keyword rankings were where they should be, and the next thing you know, they’ve dropped or have completely vanished. You’re wondering, what is going on?
It’s essential that your business ranks well on search engines like Google. You want your potential customers to be able to easily find you. Any change to your rankings can be alarming, but it’s not always time to panic.
Just because your keyword rankings have changed, it doesn’t mean your site has been completely ousted from Google’s results page.
September and October 2026 showed us first hand the importance of analysing the full picture when assessing the SEO health of your site.
What is Going On With Google Rankings?
In September 2026, Google started its next “spam update” which concluded in early October.
It’s normal for Google to update its search technology. This allows the company to show relevant information to its users and cut down on untrustworthy or spam websites.
It’s also normal for website rankings to be changed or improved with each of Google’s updates.
However, with each of these updates, ranking software used by SEO professionals to analyse a site, was also updated.
This, along with Google’s changes, caused many sites to lose their rankings, even though they weren’t unpublished from Google’s search engine results.
Many companies and agencies employ specialised SEO software to track their website’s ranking for key search terms.
These software programs routinely scrape and capture data from Google’s search result pages to evaluate their client’s website ranking.
During the recent outage, third-party programs encountered challenges in harvesting Google ranking data due to updated restrictions implemented by Google on how their search result pages are accessed.
As a result, many programs lost their ability to track a website’s ranking for specific search terms, and those terms potentially no longer appeared in the program’s ranking reports.
From a marketing perspective, just because a search term no longer appears in a ranking report, it does not necessarily mean that search term no longer appears in Google’s search result pages.
Additionally, third-party SEO software programs experienced difficulties collecting and processing Google ranking data during the outage, but this shouldn’t be confused with Google’s periodic evaluation and removal of spam websites from its search result pages.
How Can You Verify If Your Rankings Dropped?
If you notice your website ranking unexpectedly drops, it would be good practice to verify if Google’s search result pages reflect this change.
To evaluate your website’s search ranking for target keywords, you should review if your webpages appear for your target keywords, and if yes, in which position, based on the search query.
Besides this, Google Search Console also provides webpage performance data for different target keywords, and can be helpful to evaluate if a page has suddenly lost traffic.
It’s also advisable to analyse your website’s organic traffic and leads.
An example of this would be if your SEO software says you’ve lost some major rankings, but your organic traffic and leads are steady, then the software may be wrong and there may be a reporting issue.
However, if there is a consistent decline in rankings, impressions, clicks and leads then there may be an issue and further analysis is warranted.
Why SEO Performance Should Not Be Evaluated Solely On Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings help measure the performance of a website’s SEO strategy, but they need to be analysed within the context of other variables.
A website may rank for numerous keywords, but if the visitors do not result in a business lead then they are of no benefit.
Also, it is possible for a website to rank for a select number of keywords and experience fluctuation, while the website as a whole is performing well.
The performance of a website may be assessed, with a higher level of assurance, by assessing:
– Search terms for which the website appears in organic search results, and the associated click through rate (Google Search Console).
– Visitors who come to the website through organic search results (organic website traffic).
– The average time visitors spend on the website (and specific web pages) (website engagement).
– Leads and sales (conversions).
Assessing variables in addition to keyword rankings provide a website owner with the ability to evaluate the overall performance of their website.
What Should You Do If Your Rankings Disappeared?
It is important to understand that if you’ve received a ranking report that shows a decline in rankings, you should not make many changes to your website to try and counter the effects reported.
Consider multiple sources, review your site’s performance, and verify the changes are legitimate.
Google regularly updates its search algorithm. If your site was impacted, a decrease in search traffic and ranking for certain terms is verified.
From an SEO perspective, continual improvement is best practice.
Unnecessary, rapid site edits can also impact a site’s functionality.
There are many reasons a site may be delisted and Google won’t always disclose the reason. Sometimes, there is a delay between an edit and a site being delisted. If you are seeing delistings that do not correlate to site edits, reach out to Google’s support to understand why the delisting occurred.
Need Help Understanding Your Website’s Google Rankings?
Finding your site has lost Google rankings and traffic can be distressing, especially if your site assists your business to generate new customers.
At Freetimers Digital, we understand how concerning sudden changes in Google rankings can be, particularly when your website plays an important role in generating new business.
Our approach to SEO goes beyond simply tracking keyword positions. We look at your website’s overall search visibility, organic traffic, user engagement and conversions to build a clearer picture of performance.
If you’ve noticed unexpected changes in your Google rankings or want to understand how effectively your website is performing, get in touch with Freetimers Digital to find out how we can help.