Google Volatility Impacts Food & Drink Businesses The Most

Industries Hit Hard

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According to the report in Search Engine Land, the food and drink category in the SERPs saw a 54% increase in volatility between 2024 and 2023. After a tumultuous time during the pandemic, it’s a shame to see this particular industry suffering in the online space as well.

Other industries were also impacted by the ups and downs in the search landscape, with dramatic changes year on year:

🔻 Home & Garden: 36% volatility increase

🔻 Travel: 36% volatility increase

🔻 Business & Industrial: 34% volatility increase

🔻 Hobbies & Leisure: 34% volatility increase

You can see how other sectors fared in 2024 in the image below.

The only industry that didn’t see a sizable volatility change in 2024 was real estate. So, if you’re considering building a real estate website, the SERPs look reasonably stable – while the change was minor in comparison to other industries, real estate has still been hit by volatility.

Is Google Volatility the New Normal?

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Google was pretty relentless in 2024, rolling out four core updates and three spam updates within 12 months. Unfortunately, this is fairly standard for Google, with 2023 also seeing four core updates, and other notable algorithm shifts, including the Helpful Content update.

That said, in the downtime between updates, volatility in the SERPs remained high for most of 2024 – Semrush recorded an 80% increase in “very high volatility” days.

What can we expect from 2025 and is volatility the new normal? Google hinted at the December Search Central Live Event that we can expect frequent updates this year. In January, SERP volatility remained high, though it looks to have calmed down since the start of February.

Business owners should remain at the ready and continue to work on optimizing their sites and content to be valuable for readers. For food and drink businesses hit hard by Google’s many algorithm updates, I recommend exploring local SEO strategies and optimizing your Google Business Profile to ensure your website is seen as widely as possible by the right users. You can also follow SEO best practices and keep an eye on our newsfeed for the latest updates from Google.