Anyone else seeing weird CTR swings after the latest Google update?

[mike_donovan]

Been watching a few of my sites this week and the CTR is all over the place.

One affiliate site is basically holding rankings, but clicks dropped hard on a couple of money pages. Another site actually picked up a bit of traffic without moving much in Ahrefs/Semrush. So it feels more like Google is reshuffling SERP layout and snippets than pure ranking changes.

What I’ve tested so far:
– rewrote a few titles to be more direct and less “SEO-ish”
– added FAQ-style sections to some pages
– changed a couple meta descriptions on pages with decent impressions but weak CTR
– checked if AI-written intros were hurting anything, but honestly the pattern doesn’t look that simple

The weird part is that one page with a boring title is outperforming a more “optimized” one. Makes me think intent match matters way more than trying to be clever with titles.

Also seeing a small bump from a couple pages that have stronger affiliate comparison tables near the top. Nothing crazy, but enough to notice.

Curious if anyone else is seeing:
– rankings stable but clicks down
– CTR changes on pages with the same position
– better performance from simpler titles
– weird behavior on affiliate pages vs informational pages

If you’ve got a site with mixed content, what’s actually moving the needle right now? I’m trying to keep this practical and not overthink it.

[Author]

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