- Google has not confirmed any update since the May 2026 core update finished rolling out on June 2, so the current volatility should be treated as an observation, not an official event.
- Some site owners are reporting organic traffic drops of 25% to 30%, but those numbers are self-reported examples from affected sites, not a measured cross-site average.
Google is currently rolling out an unannounced update that is impacting a lot of sites and businesses.
It started last Friday and hasn’t slowed down since then.
Let’s go through it.
By the way, you can see whether your business is appearing across Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude,… https://t.co/JdiYwdXwkd pic.twitter.com/wkDJ26GozP
— Alex Groberman (@alexgroberman) June 23, 2026
Friday, June 19 is when the chatter started getting louder.
Site owners across forums and social feeds began reporting traffic drops they could not easily explain. Some said organic traffic had fallen by 25% to 30%. Others said rankings looked mostly stable, while clicks were still down.
SEO professional Alex Groberman was among the people flagging the movement publicly, saying it appeared to have started the previous Friday and had not slowed down.
Search Engine Roundtable also covered the June 19 chatter, noting that early reports appeared especially loud in black-hat SEO circles, while the major volatility tracking tools were mostly calm. That is the part worth paying attention to: community noise and ranking dashboards are not telling the same story.
The May 2026 core update finished rolling out on June 2. Google has not named, confirmed or acknowledged any new update tied to the June 19 movement. For now, this should be treated as a community-observed event, not an official Google update.
Clicks Down, Rankings Stable: The Split That Matters
Before drawing conclusions from Search Console, site owners need to separate three things: impressions, rankings and clicks.
If impressions are falling, Google may be showing the page less often.
If rankings are falling, the page may have lost position.
But if clicks are dropping while impressions and average position mostly hold, the page itself may not be the main problem. The search result around it may have changed.
That is a very different diagnosis.
Ahrefs reported earlier this year that AI Overviews were associated with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking organic result. The exact impact will vary by query, industry and intent, but the direction is hard to ignore: when Google answers more of the query directly on the results page, the top organic result can become less clickable.
Add People Also Ask boxes, forum results, videos, ads, shopping modules or Google-owned surfaces and a page can hold its position while still losing traffic.
No penalty was issued. The result simply became less clickable because Google answered more of the query inside the SERP.
Who Seems to Be Affected?
The early framing around the June 19 movement pointed partly toward black-hat sites. That may explain some of the initial forum noise, but it does not explain every report.
Some webmasters with cleaner sites also reported losses and pushed back against the idea that this was simply a penalty wave. Their argument was different: the traffic loss looked more like SERP displacement than a direct ranking action.
Informational pages appear especially vulnerable to that kind of drop.
A commercial page with strong buying intent may still get clicks because the user needs to compare prices, book a demo or complete a purchase. But a simple informational query can be answered directly in an AI Overview or another rich SERP element.
That matters for publishers, news sites and content-heavy websites. They can be hit even when rankings do not collapse.
Sites with thin informational pages, recycled AI content or expired-domain authority may still have been weakened by the May core update. But for legitimate publishers, the current problem may be less about being demoted and more about being pushed below a search result that now answers the query before the click.
The Policy Backdrop: AI Search Is Now Inside the Spam Framework
This is also happening against a policy backdrop that matters for marketers.
On May 15, Google clarified that its Search spam policies also apply to generative AI responses, including AI Overviews and AI Mode.
That does not prove any connection to the June 19 volatility. There is no confirmed link between the May 15 policy clarification and the traffic drops being reported now.
The connection is context, not evidence.
Still, the clarification matters. Google is saying that spam tactics aimed at influencing AI-generated answers can be treated like spam tactics aimed at influencing traditional rankings.
That should get the attention of teams running GEO, AI visibility or AI search optimisation campaigns.
Recommendation pages built mainly to force brand inclusion, biased listicles engineered for AI systems or content designed to artificially influence generated answers now sit closer to documented enforcement territory. The label used for the tactic matters less than the intent behind it.
If the page exists to help users, it is in a safer place. If it exists mainly to manipulate where a brand appears, the risk is higher.
What Marketers Should Actually Do Now
The most useful move right now is not panic editing.
It is diagnosis.
Search Console can usually show which problem you have, but only if you look at the right split.
- If impressions and clicks are both down, check rankings, indexing and query coverage.
- If rankings are down, review affected pages against recent competitors and SERP changes.
- If impressions are stable but clicks are down, inspect the live SERP for AI Overviews, ads, forums, videos and other features.
Those three scenarios need different responses.
A ranking loss may call for content updates, technical checks, internal linking or authority work. A click-rate loss may require a different strategy entirely: better titles, stronger brand demand, content that earns direct visits or formats that still attract clicks even when Google answers part of the query.
The Query Post has covered this distinction before in its analysis of how AI Overviews can reduce organic click-through rates.
Any team trying to optimise for AI Overviews or AI Mode should also read Google’s May 15 policy clarification carefully. It is not a new spam system. It is a clarification that existing spam rules apply to AI-generated search surfaces too.
That means the safest long-term strategy is still boring in the best way: useful content, clear sourcing, real authority, clean technical setup and pages that would deserve to exist even if no algorithm rewarded them.
For more on that policy change, see The Query Post’s coverage of Google’s updated spam rules targeting AI search manipulation.
