If you've spent any time inside Google Search Console, you've seen the pattern. Impressions climb by a thousand or two thousand in a single week, then fall back down to a new baseline a short time later. It feels like three steps forward, one step back — and if you watch it long enough, it starts to feel like SEO is just unpredictable. It isn't. There's a specific set of mechanisms driving this pattern, and once you understand them, the chart becomes a much more readable story.