Why a fixed "settling window" for rankings is largely folklore — Mueller frames volatility as "making assumptions"; Semrush: <5% held first page for a year; Dec 2025 core update produced 9 waves in 7 weeks

Claim: Three converging points:

1. Mueller frames new-site ranking volatility as Google "making assumptions" before it has signals (Mueller (May 28, 2021 SEO office hours) on new-site ranking instability — "we don't have a lot of signals for that new content yet… we have to make assumptions") — these correct in either direction, not a deliberate boost or penalty.

2. Semrush found <5% of new domains maintained first-page rankings for a year, only 4.2% held a top-10 keyword all 13 months, and 92% failed to even stay in the top 100 (Benchmark #5 (Single-source): Semrush 2022 (28,000 new domains, 13 months) — 41% reached top 10 by month 6; 19% reached and HELD; 27% of top-10 reachers stayed all year; <5% held first page for a year; 92% failed to stay in top 100; 4.2% held a top-10 keyword all 13 months). Stability is the exception, not a milestone most pages reach.

3. The "honeymoon period" (new content ranks high then drops, or starts low then climbs) is, per Mueller, not a deliberate boost or penalty — it is Google "making assumptions" before it has enough signals, which then correct in either direction. Observed honeymoon swings range from hours to a few weeks; practitioner estimates of a longer adjustment window stretch to 3–6 months.

4. Core-update context (2025–2026): Normally SERPs settle 2–4 weeks after a core update completes. But the December 2025 core update did NOT settle cleanly — 9 volatility waves in 7 weeks (Search Engine Roundtable: December 2025 core update did NOT settle cleanly — 9 separate volatility waves documented in 7 weeks (Dec 2025–Feb 2026)).

Bottom line: in the current environment, "rankings will settle in N weeks" is not a safe planning assumption.

Source: Synthesis of Mueller 2021 (Mueller (May 28, 2021 SEO office hours) on new-site ranking instability — "we don't have a lot of signals for that new content yet… we have to make assumptions", Mueller (May 2021) explicitly REJECTS both "sandbox" and "honeymoon" framings — "not the case that we're explicitly trying to promote new content or demote new content. It's just, we don't know and we have to make assumptions"); Semrush 2022; Search Engine Roundtable Dec 2025–Feb 2026.

Confidence: Industry-consensus.

Caveat: "No fixed settling window" doesn't mean "rankings are random." It means the timeline distribution is wide, and clients should be steered toward distribution-based expectations, not point-estimate promises.