Playbook: track a rollout in real time

Playbook: track a rollout in real time
A core update can take two to four weeks to fully deploy. How to monitor it without refreshing Twitter all day:

— Step 1: Bookmark the Search Status Dashboard and note the 'started' timestamp — that's your T-zero.
— Step 2: Set a GSC API pull to run daily and dump position data to a sheet automatically.
— Step 3: Watch for the 'completed' notice — only then is your data clean enough to act on.
— Step 4: Follow Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray for mid-rollout pattern reads — they surface page-type trends days before recap posts.
— Step 5: Diff your rank tracker at start vs completion, ignoring the noisy middle.

Acting on day-3 data of a 21-day rollout is the classic mistake.

One to bookmark: Google's Search Status Dashboard — the only source for official start/end timestamps.