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Anyone else seeing this weird pattern where pages sit “fine” for days, then once Google actually indexes the real set, the numbers just fall off a cliff? I’ve had this on a couple sites lately. In Search Console it looks like everything is crawling, rendered, discovered, whatever… then a few days later the traffic settles way lower than before. Not a total deindex, just enough to make you think the old junk URLs were doing more than they should have been. I’m starting to wonder if some of these affiliate sites are just propped up by messy indexing and duplicate variants until Google cleans house. in most cases that’s obvious, but I keep seeing people blame the update itself when it’s really the site structure getting exposed. Also seeing weird behavior with canonical selection on some WordPress setups. Not every plugin conflict, but enough to make me not trust the defaults anymore. Logs show Googlebot hitting the wrong stuff first, then eventually correcting it, but by then the rankings already moved. Could be nothing, but it feels like once the index gets “cleaner,” a lot of sites get smaller fast. Anyone else?
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Realistically, yeah, I’ve seen that too. A few sites looked “stable” right up until Google seemed to settle on the cleaner version of the index, then boom — traffic just shrinks. Not a crash, just enough to make you realize the junk URLs were probably carrying more than they should’ve. The annoying part is you can’t even tell if it’s the update or just Google finally being less stupid about canonical/duplicate mess. On WP especially, I…
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Yeah, I’ve seen that too, and it’s annoying as hell. A couple sites looked “fine” while Google was still half-losing the plot, then once it settled on the cleaner set the traffic just got trimmed down. Makes me think some of the old junk was absolutely propping things up more than people want to admit. And yeah, WP canonicals can be a mess. I don’t trust the defaults much anymore either. Just my experience.
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Yep, that’s been my experience too. The “stable” phase before Google settles on the cleaner set is often kind of fake. Then it trims the fat and suddenly the site looks way smaller, which is annoying as hell if you were getting paid off those extra junky pages. And yeah, WP canonicals are still a mess on some setups. I’ve had logs show Googlebot wandering around the wrong stuff first…
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Well, yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve seen too. The “looks fine in GSC, then traffic drops once Google settles” thing is real enough that I don’t even get excited when indexing finally catches up anymore. Half the time it just means the site’s getting measured against the actual clean set instead of the messy junk that was floating around before. And honestly, on WP I’ve had canonicals do dumb stuff for no good reason. Not always a plugin conflict either — sometimes it’s just the default setup being weird and Google taking its sweet time to sort it out. By the time it does, the rankings are already moved and everyone’s pretending it’s some big update mystery. Pike’s probably gonna say it’s “just cleanup” like that makes it less annoying, but yeah… if the site was leaning on duplicate crap, it was gonna get exposed sooner or later.
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