Search Console Click Spikes in November: What We Know

Between 31 October and 2 November 2026, some sites saw clicks in Search Console jump to as much as 6.5 times their normal level while impressions stayed almost flat. The spikes were measured by SEO practitioners, not Google, which hasn't explained them. By 4 November the numbers were reported to be back to normal.

What we know

  • What people saw: according to Search Engine Roundtable (3 November, updated on the 4th), several SEOs noticed click spikes in the performance report of some properties, not all. Glenn Gabe said he only saw it on a few.
  • Numbers from one measurement: on 3 November Marie Haynes published details for three anonymised properties, comparing 2 November with the previous seven-day average: from about 50 to 327 clicks (6.5x), from about 16 to 66 (4.1x) and from about 68 to 144 (2.1x). On the first two, more than 80% of clicks came from desktop.
  • An odd pattern: per Haynes, many queries ranking in positions 12 to 54 (results pages 2 to 6) showed click-through rates of 45% to 100%, while impressions barely moved.
  • Other cases: Search Engine Roundtable cites spikes of up to 10x on UK sites (Dan Nutter) and one case where the web interface showed the spike on only one of three properties checked through the API.
  • Causes are hypotheses: bots or AI agents clicking results, CTR manipulation networks, rank-tracking tools, or a failure in Google's filtering. None is confirmed.
  • What Google says: nothing so far. Search Engine Roundtable asked for comment and got none; the official Search Console data anomalies page did not mention these dates when checked on 5 November.
  • The end: on 4 November Joy Hawkins wrote that data was back to normal, and Glenn Gabe confirmed it was coming down.

What changes and what doesn't

  • What changes is how you read your reports: if your site was affected, October and November may show a jump in clicks that aren't real visits.
  • Your rankings don't change: impressions and positions on the measured sites stayed stable, according to Haynes.
  • There's nothing to fix on your site: Haynes advises against changing pages or using the disavow tool.

How to tell if you're affected

  1. Open the performance report in Search Console for the last 28 days and look for a jump in clicks between 31 October and 2 November with no rise in impressions.
  2. Compare it with your analytics: if Google Analytics or another tool shows no extra visits from Google on those days, the extra clicks are almost certainly not people. This check is this article's suggestion.
  3. Look for the pattern: in the Pages tab, filter by position greater than 10 and sort by clicks. Pages from page 2 or lower with lots of clicks point to the spike.
  4. Set it aside with the filters Haynes suggests: exclude the affected URL («URLs not containing»), filter by country if the jump comes from one country, or look at mobile only to see the normal trend (note that this also drops real desktop traffic).
  5. Annotate it: add an annotation in Search Console or a note in your monthly report so nobody reads those days as an improvement.

Related: Rank Trackers See Google Ignore Part of the Query

Sources

Updates: if Google explains the spikes or adds them to its anomalies page, it will be added here with a link.