Google Investigating Reports Of Declining Traffic After Updates, Discover Bug

Google’s core updates have often resulted in a traffic increase or decline for some websites.

However, after the latest updates and possible bugs in Discover, publishers have noticed an unprecedented drop in website traffic and visibility in Google Search.

Reports from various sources indicate that these changes have led to dramatic consequences, with some sites experiencing a drastic reduction in clicks, even going from millions to zero overnight.

Lily Ray shared alarming statistics on November 17, revealing that many publishers are witnessing their traffic plummet in less than three months.

10.6 million clicks to 0 overnight in less than 3 months. Just crazy.@searchliaison @JohnMu all of my inboxes are full of stories like these from publishers all over the world.

Not just Discover but Top Stories too.

I understand there were core updates and a glitch… https://t.co/ownYd9dhaW

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 17, 2023

This isn’t just a case of reduced visibility in Google’s Discover feature and top stories, signifying a broader impact across Google’s content delivery platforms.

Website owners echoed the sentiment of despair and frustration.

After years of hard work and dedication, many websites suffered a significant setback, disappearing first from Google News and later from Discovery.

The abruptness of this change highlights the volatile nature of digital content strategy in the wake of these core updates.

Google SearchLiaison, in response to the growing concerns, stated their willingness to examine individual sites shared by publishers.

Updating this: we have enough reports at this point. If we need more, we might create a form.

We are looking into what’s reported to see if there are *general* improvements we can make; we are not making changes for particular sites (our systems don’t work that way), so if you… pic.twitter.com/PIEeNlqVxl

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 20, 2023

However, they clarified that the recent updates and the identified Discover bug, which has since been resolved, are part of broader system improvements.

“We did find a Discover bug earlier that was corrected. It might be that we’ll find another bug. Alternatively, we might find ways to better tune our systems. But none of this guarantees a site might return to some past level.”

These changes are not designed to target or rectify issues on specific websites.

This statement underscores the complexity and often opaque nature of Google’s algorithm updates, leaving many publishers in the dark about how to adapt or recover.

Reports of traffic declines due to updates and bugs are a stark reminder of the volatile nature of the digital marketing world.

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