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Anecdotal, but my website lost a lot of search traffic after Google's core update in March, which seems to have affected SO as well looking at the first chart.

Anecdotal, but my website lost a lot of search traffic after Google's core update in March, which seems to have affected SO as well looking at the first chart. If I look at Google's guidelines, my articles follow all of them: in-depth, well-researched, demonstrating personal experience, better than other articles appearing in the search results. And yet, they were "penalized" by this update for who knows what reason. I looked into it and some other websites benefited from the update, so who knows what changes they made and why.

johnny_reilly 3y ago
Again anecdotal, but I lost the majority of my SEO traffic late last year around the time of a core update. I've spent the best part of a year attempting to repair it, on the assumption I'd committed some heinous SEO crime. The more time that passes, I'm starting to think that the issue isn't mine so much as Google's. It's baffling. I wrote about it here: https://johnnyreilly.com/how-i-ruined-my-seo https://johnnyreilly.com/how-i-ruined-my-seo
- DeusExMachina 3y ago
  Looking at your post and the HN discussion, I am also of the same impression.
- slashdev 3y ago
  I don’t see what you did wrong, it must have been the algorithm change. My parents had a business that was killed by a Facebook algorithm change. My brother took a significant hit from an Amazon algorithm change. Building a business around any of the big tech companies seems very risky. I think Google search has just declined a lot. I guess they’re losing the constant cat and mouse game with SEO. It seems worse than it has ever been, I’m relying more on ChatGPT and copilot now. I can only imagine that LLMs will be the end of any content based search ranking. I don’t know how they’ll adapt to that.
- verteu 3y ago
  Maybe Google (semi/permanently?) penalized your domain when spammers started using your GA4 tag?
  - johnny_reilly 3y ago
    Gosh that would suck. Sounds plausible though

johnny_reilly 3y ago

Again anecdotal, but I lost the majority of my SEO traffic late last year around the time of a core update. I've spent the best part of a year attempting to repair it, on the assumption I'd committed some heinous SEO crime. The more time that passes, I'm starting to think that the issue isn't mine so much as Google's. It's baffling. I wrote about it here: https://johnnyreilly.com/how-i-ruined-my-seo https://johnnyreilly.com/how-i-ruined-my-seo

DeusExMachina 3y ago
Looking at your post and the HN discussion, I am also of the same impression.
slashdev 3y ago
I don’t see what you did wrong, it must have been the algorithm change. My parents had a business that was killed by a Facebook algorithm change. My brother took a significant hit from an Amazon algorithm change. Building a business around any of the big tech companies seems very risky. I think Google search has just declined a lot. I guess they’re losing the constant cat and mouse game with SEO. It seems worse than it has ever been, I’m relying more on ChatGPT and copilot now. I can only imagine that LLMs will be the end of any content based search ranking. I don’t know how they’ll adapt to that.
verteu 3y ago
Maybe Google (semi/permanently?) penalized your domain when spammers started using your GA4 tag?
- johnny_reilly 3y ago
  Gosh that would suck. Sounds plausible though