Welcome to another Growth Intelligence Brief, where organic growth leaders discover what matters and guidance on how to stay ahead of the competition in under 5 minutes. Data window: SEO visibility July 15 to August 10, 2026 (26 days); AI mentions from the August 4 fetch.
Exec Summary
Search volatility is spiking: 11% of companies in the SSI with real visibility moved more than 20% in calendar week 31 (July 27 to August 2), against 1.2% the week before, and the 4 most volatile weeks in the index’s history all landed in 2026. Google announced nothing.
Three weeks after GIB 22, 82 companies saw more than 20% volatility in a single week, compared to 9 companies the week before.
ZipRecruiter gave back its entire July spike: down 31.2% in calendar week 31 and 24.6% for the 26-day window, closing at 76, below its June 15 level of 77.
Jobs (-9.4%) and Local Search (-15.5%) flipped from leading the July window at +12.4% and +10.6%, while Delivery stayed positive at +10.0%.
The dictionary cluster gained 10.7% in the 26 days to August 10, and References posted the largest share gain in the index (+1.40 points) for the 2nd consecutive window. The last 2 Augusts were flat.
YouTube lost 17.3% in the 26 days to August 10 after 6 straight down weeks; Social Networks fell 5.9%, while Reddit sat still at +1.1%.
Aggregators hold 76.0% of the SEO visibility split between the 2 company types, and only 38.3% of ChatGPT’s citation pool (August 4 fetch).
Let’s dig in.
SEO landscape check
Below is a quick read on the current state of search, built from the SSI (Search Signals Index): roughly 2,600 companies tracked across 26 verticals on 2 dimensions, SEO visibility and AI mentions.
Calendar week 31 delivered the 3rd sharpest weekly shuffle in the index’s history, with data back to November 2022.
82 of 747 companies with a baseline above 3 moved more than 20% in 7 days, an 11.0% rate against 1.2% the week before and 0.1% the week after.
Only week 19 in May (15.4%) and week 15 in April (11.6%) rank higher, and the 4 sharpest weeks on record all landed in 2026.
Google confirmed no update. Trackers logged heavy volatility August 1 to 3 with no announcement (Search Engine Roundtable), and the index total barely registered it, slipping 0.5% across 1,834 matched companies. The shuffle ran under a flat surface.
July’s spike names gave it all back
ZipRecruiter, GIB 22‘s winner, hit an all-time high of 113 on July 27, then lost 31.2% in week 31. It closed the 26 days to August 10 at 76, slightly below its June 15 level of 77.
Its entire July gain is gone.
Yellow Pages shows the same pattern: An all-time high of 28 on July 27, a 28.3% drop in week 31, and a 13.4% loss for the window after 3 consecutive issues on the Movers list. The same reversal shows up at the vertical level, all in the same 26 days:
Jobs fell -11% after leading the July window at +12.4%
Local Search fell -16.7% after gaining 10.6%
Delivery held at +12%, the only July leader still positive
The losses stayed concentrated in last month’s spike names. Across 564 companies with data in both windows, the correlation between July moves and August moves is -0.08, essentially 0, so the index as a whole didn’t swing back. Whatever re-sorted, week 31 hit July’s one-week spikes first.
Angi, GIB 22‘s loser, stopped falling: down 3.9% for this window to 2, with its first up-week since June 1.
Dictionaries collected the shelf space
The 7-site dictionary cluster gained 10.7% in the 26 days to August 10, from 2,528 to 2,798, and References posted the largest share gain of any vertical (+1.40 points, n=80) for the 2nd consecutive window (GIB 22: +4.6%).
Merriam-Webster +9.4% to 1,412, 0.9% below its May 18 peak of 1,425
Dictionary.com +21.3% to 439, still 37.9% below its September 2023 peak of 707
Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries +37.8%
Vocabulary.com +21.0%
The Free Dictionary +58.3%, a top-5 Mover this window
This is not the usual back-to-school bump. The same July-to-August window was flat in the last 2 years (-0.8% in 2024, +1.6% in 2025) and rose 13.4% in 2023 for the sites tracked back then. A normal August doesn’t produce a 10.7% gain.
The catch: The Wikimedia side of the reference stack went the other way. Wiktionary fell 23.4%, and wikimedia.org fell 32.0% in the same 26 days, while en.wikipedia.org added 268 raw points, the largest raw gain in the index. Ecommerce collected shelf space too, gaining 9.5% across 291 companies, with Amazon up 12.8% and Home Depot up 27.0%.
YouTube extended its slide while Reddit sat out
YouTube lost 17.3% in the 26 days to August 10, from 4,100 to 3,391, its 2nd consecutive issue in decline after -12.2% in GIB 22. The slide ran 6 straight weeks from the June 22 peak of 5,288 before its first uptick on August 10, a 35.9% drawdown in 7 weeks. YouTube alone accounts for 97% of Entertainment’s 12.3% vertical decline.
The rest of social followed, all in the same 26 days:
Facebook -9.2%
Instagram -11.6%
Pinterest -7.5%
Snapchat -30.8%
Reddit sat this one out. After +18.1% in GIB 21 and -14.0% in GIB 22, it closed the window at +1.1%, at 2,338. Two windows of whipsaw, then stillness.
A related Google move landed in the same window: Search Console now tracks how Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube content performs in Search and Discover through platform properties (Search Engine Roundtable, July 7), rolled out to all users since July 29. The platform domains are losing SERP visibility while their content becomes a search surface you can measure directly; verify your accounts and see which queries route to your profiles.
The bigger story sits on the AI side: ChatGPT cites a different set of companies than Google’s AI surfaces do. Let’s Double Click.
Behind the gate: The Top 5 Movers and Shakers, Winner and Loser breakdowns for The Kitchn and StreetEasy, and the Double Click on the brands ChatGPT cites that Google’s AI surfaces skip. Upgrade to read the full issue.
