Some are noticing a huge spike in clicks being reported within the performance reports in Google Search Console. We saw this for some of our own properties but when I dived in, I am thinking this may be a bug in the tool.
Examples. Joy Hawkins first shared an example on social media, she said, “Seeing a few sites that have massive spikes in traffic in Google Search Console. Still unclear if it’s real traffic because some of the patterns just seem odd. Anyone else seeing this?”
Glenn Gabe also shared an example on social media:
I also see comments on my site about some people seeing this.
API also. The Google Search Console API is also returning these spikes in clicks.
The weird thing is that in some profiles, the API shows the spike, but the web interface directly on Search Console does not show the spike in clicks.
Why we care. We asked Google if this is a bug in the reporting or not. It seems unusual, especially since we see the spike in the API for some sites and not on the web interface. However, many are seeing this spike in the web interface as well.
But not all sites/profiles in Google Search Console are showing this.
We will update this story if and when Google responds.