Search engine results pages (SERP) volatility denotes the volatility in a website’s rank. High volatility means the rank changes dramatically and quickly over time, whereas low volatility refers to website rankings that are more or less stable.
SERP volatility is highest across the board when Google updates its crawler and indexing algorithms. Because these algorithms slightly change the criteria upon which websites are ranked, they can cause website rankings to rise or fall sharply as they no longer meet the correct criteria.
For SEO marketers, monitoring a website’s SERP volatility is important in order to understand fluctuations in web traffic over time.