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In most cases, anyone else had this happen? I cleaned up a bunch of obvious issues on a client site last week and traffic dipped right after. Not a massive crash, but enough to make me annoyed. Could be coincidence, sure, but I’ve seen this more than once. You spend a day making the site “better” and Google acts like you broke it. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it’s hard not to.
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Sure. Yeah, seen that plenty of times. Half the time it’s just timing and Google doing its usual little dance, but there’s also the fun part where “fixing” a bunch of stuff changes how the site gets crawled and interpreted for a bit. Clean up enough junk and suddenly the machine decides it needs to “re-evaluate” everything like it’s a brand new site or something. I’d be a lot more suspicious if the dip was huge or kept getting worse. A small drop right after tech changes? Annoying, but not exactly shocking. Google loves punishing people for making things better, apparently.
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Yeah, happens. Usually it’s not “Google hates fixes,” it’s the site getting re-crawled/reprocessed after you changed enough stuff to matter. I’d only start worrying if the dip sticks around past a couple crawl cycles or you changed something dumb like canonicals/noindex/internal links and didn’t notice. Otherwise it’s pretty normal annoying noise. Just my experience.
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Kind of feels like yeah, I’ve seen it. Usually it’s just the site getting reprocessed after you moved enough stuff around, not some mystical “Google hates cleanups” thing. If it’s a small dip and then it settles, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. If it keeps sliding, then yeah, start checking the stuff that actually breaks things instead of the obvious cleanup work.
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Yeah, seen it. Usually it’s not the cleanup itself, it’s the site getting reprocessed and Google wobbling around for a bit. If you touched canonicals, internal links, redirects, noindex stuff, that’s where I’d look first. If it’s just a mild dip and then it levels out, I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it yet. Could be wrong though.
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Yeah, I’ve seen that too. Usually it’s not the cleanup itself, it’s the site getting reprocessed and Google doing its little wobble thing for a bit. If you touched canonicals, redirects, internal links, or accidentally changed crawl paths, that’s when I’d get suspicious. Otherwise a small dip right after “fixing” stuff is annoyingly normal. I’d only really care if it doesn’t come back after a couple crawl cycles. If it’s just a week or two of noise, meh. Google loves making people think they broke something when they typically just changed…
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Yeah, I’ve seen it plenty. Usually it’s not the “fixes” themselves so much as Google re-evaluating the whole mess after you move signals around. Even boring stuff like internal links or canonicals can shuffle which URLs get picked up first, and for a few days it just looks worse before it settles. What I watch is whether the dip lines up with: – pages getting recrawled in Search Console – canonical changes – redirects or noindex cleanup – internal link changes to important pages If it’s just a small drop right after cleanup, I don’t panic. If it keeps sliding for 2-3 weeks, then yeah, I start thinking one of the “fixes” wasn’t actually a fix. Google has this habit of making the site look broken right after you stop…
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Yeah, pretty normal in my experience. I’ve had cleanup jobs where traffic dipped for a bit right after, then settled back down once Google reprocessed everything. If you changed canonicals, redirects, internal links, or noindex stuff, I’d watch it a little closer. If it’s just a small wobble for a week or two, I wouldn’t read too much into it yet. Personally,
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From what I’ve seen, yeah, seen it a bunch. Usually the “fix” just changes what Google’s looking at for a bit and the numbers get weird before they settle. If it was a bunch of cleanup stuff at once, I’d be more suspicious of one of the changes than the whole idea of technical SEO. Canonicals, redirects, internal links… easy to make things look “better” on paper and worse in practice for a week or two. If it’s still drifting down after a couple weeks, then yeah, something probably got nudged the wrong way. Otherwise I’d just let it breathe and not panic yet.
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Yeah, happens all the time. Half the time it’s just Google reprocessing the mess and everyone starts doom-posting after 3 days. The annoying part is when one of the “cleanup” changes actually was the bad move and u don’t find that out until later. Well, If it’s a small dip right after a bunch of technical changes, I wouldn’t freak out yet. If it keeps sagging after a couple weeks, then I’d start looking at which fix actually changed…
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Well, yeah, I’ve had that happen. Half the time it’s just the site settling, half the time you accidentally “fix” something Google was leaning on, which is super annoying. If it was a bunch of changes at once, I wouldn’t trust the timing too much yet. But if it keeps sliding after a couple weeks, then yeah, one of those cleanup moves probably wasn’t as clean as it looked.
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In most cases, yeah, seen it plenty. Most of the time it’s just the site getting reprocessed and the timing makes people panic. But I’ve also had “cleanup” work expose a dependency you didn’t realize was propping stuff up — internal links, canonicals, noindex handling, pagination, whatever. Google loves to treat that like a personality test. What I usually look at first is: – crawl stats / log hits before and after – which URLs lost impressions, not just traffic – whether the dip is sitewide or just the cleaned-up section – if important pages got less internal linking after the changes If it’s a small dip right after a bunch of fixes, I’d wait a bit before calling it broken. If it keeps sliding and the logs show Googlebot backing off or stuck on junk URLs, then yeah, one of the “fixes” typically wasn’t a fix. The annoying part is you don’t always know which change did it until you roll back or…
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Yeah, I’ve had it happen more times than I’d like. Usually it’s nothing, just Google being its usual garbage for a bit after a cleanup. But every now and then you do “fix” something and it turns out that thing was holding the whole mess together in a dumb way. What’d you actually change? Because the difference between “normal wobble” and “oops, we nuked something” is usually in the details, not the timing.
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Personally, yeah, I’ve seen it. Usually right after a cleanup too, which is the fun part. If it was a bunch of technical changes at once, I wouldn’t even assume it’s “the fix” yet. Google’s just weird about reprocessing stuff, and sometimes traffic dips while it shuffles everything around. But if you touched canonicals, internal links, noindex, redirects, or pagination, I’d be a lot less relaxed about it. Honestly the first thing I’d check is whether the pages that dropped are the ones you “improved” or if it’s the whole site just wobbling. Sitewide wobble I’d mostly wait on. Specific page drops after cleanup? Yeah, that usually means something got knocked loose.
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Yeah, I’ve seen it too. Half the time it’s just the reprocessing wobble, but sometimes the “cleanup” was doing more than you thought and Google was leaning on some ugly little dependency. If it’s only a small dip for a few days, I’d be annoyed but not freak out yet. If it keeps sliding, then yeah, something typically got changed that mattered more than it looked.
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From my experience, honestly, Yeah, happens. Usually I don’t panic over a small dip right after cleanup unless it lines up with something obvious like canonicals, redirects, noindex, internal link changes, that kind of thing. If it’s just “we fixed a bunch of junk” and traffic twitches for a few days, I’d call that normal Google nonsense. If it keeps sliding after a week or two, then I’d start looking harder. Otherwise it’s probably just reprocessing.
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