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Yeah, same here. A couple accounts looked “fine” until sales started filtering them and half the leads were basically dead on arrival. I don’t think it’s just tracking either — some of this traffic is just trash now. That’s been my experience anyway.
Yeah, same here. One client site’s getting crawled like normal and the other one’s just… sitting there doing nothing for a bit. I’m not jumping to “site’s broken” anymore unless the logs or internal linking are actually off. Google’s been weird enough lately that I’d rather blame Google first for once.
Yeah, seeing it too. One site’s moving, another’s just sitting there like Google forgot it exists for a few days. I’m not convinced it’s always anything you changed. Sometimes it really does just feel random lately. In my opinion,
Yeah, I’d still suspect the plugin update before I’d blame Google straight away. I’ve seen updates do some stupid stuff where nothing *looks* broken until you check source / logs / Search Console and realize a bunch of pages are suddenly doing something dumb in the background. Canonicals getting messed with, noindex sneaking in, cached junk sticking around, that kind of crap. If it was a clean drop right after the update, I’d probably roll back one plugin at a time and see what changes. The “Google just decided to nuke me” theory is always popular, but half the time it’s some stupid plugin conflict nobody bothered to test properly.
Yeah, I’d be looking at the plugin side first too. I’ve had “mystery traffic drops” that turned out to be some dumb cache/minify/plugin combo breaking canonical tags or serving stale crap to Google. Pike’s right for once, annoyingly enough. Roll it back if you can and see if anything changes. If it’s one of those affiliate sites with a bunch of junky add-ons, I’d also check whether the update started bloating the page or firing extra JS all over the place. Google doesn’t need much excuse to get weird.
In most cases, in my opinion, yeah, happens all the time. “Looks like cache” is usually just WordPress lying to your face while some plugin is messing with admin JS or output buffering or whatever. If it calmed down after disabling a few, I’d still bet one of those is the culprit, not actual cache. The broken CSS on only a couple pages is the part that usually gives it away for me.
Yeah, I’m seeing the same crap. Usually when one of those waves hits, it’s not even clever spam, it’s just a flood of obviously fake signups and the same dumb post templates over and over. I wouldn’t blame Google directly though. Feels more like some bot network found a gap or the spam filters got a little lazier after the update and now everything’s slipping through. Happens way too often.
Personally, yeah, I’ve seen it happen. Not every time, obviously, but cache/SEO plugin updates are absolutely on the suspect list when impressions fall off like that. The annoying part is the site can *look* fine in the browser and still be feeding Google something dumb — wrong canonicals, noindex getting flipped, robots output changing, stale cached headers, whatever. I’ve had one update break mobile cache output for bots only, which was fun to find after the fact. If it were me I’d check the boring stuff first: – page source on a couple key URLs – canonical tags – robots meta – sitemap output – whether the cache is serving old junk to crawlers If you updated both plugins around the same time, yeah, that’s basically asking for a headache. Could still be a Google wobble, but if impressions dropped right after the update, I wouldn’t just shrug…
Personally, yeah, that’s been happening a lot more than it used to. I’ve had pages sit dead for ages, finally get indexed, then basically get buried the moment Google “notices” them. Usually means they passed the crawl/index hurdle but still aren’t earning anything in the actual SERPs. Which is almost worse, honestly. On affiliate sites especially, I’ve seen it where the page gets indexed, gets a tiny burst, then falls off a cliff. Feels like Google’s just testing it, deciding it’s another samey affiliate page, and moving on. Annoying as hell. From what I see,
Yeah, I’ve seen that too. Indexed doesn’t mean much anymore if Google decides the page is thin or just not worth showing. Had a couple WP affiliate sites do exactly that — pages finally get picked up, then impressions just sit there or tank after a week or two. Usually it’s either weak intent match, some template issue, or the site’s just getting treated like another cookie-cutter affiliate dump. Google’s real generous like that. From what I see,
Yeah, I’m seeing the same dumb split. Classic search still looks “okay” enough to lull people into thinking nothing’s wrong, then the AI/retrieval side just acts like half the site got memory-holed. I’ve had solid pages with decent internal linking and clean-ish schema get ignored while some flimsy FAQ-ish page gets lifted because it’s easier to chew on. Super annoying. And honestly I don’t buy the “just improve entity signals” line people keep parroting. I’ve tried that stuff on a couple sites and it didn’t change much beyond maybe making the page a little less embarrassing. The retrieval systems still seem weirdly picky about chunking and wording, like they want neat little answer blocks and not actual pages with depth. Feels less like SEO is broken and more like the AI layer is just a bad reader. Which is a problem, obviously. At least lately.
Yeah, same here. It’s that annoying “clean one batch, 20 more pop up” nonsense. Feels like they’re cycling through fresh accounts instead of reusing the old junk, which is always fun to deal with. I’ve seen this before when the signup form gets found by a bot swarm and they just hammer it all day. If you’ve got any rate limiting or email verification stuff half-baked, this is usually when it shows up. Not saying that’s the whole answer, just… it’s usually not random.
Honestly, Yeah, I’m leaning update fallout too. The “comes back for a day then dies again” part is exactly the kind of nonsense that makes this stuff so annoying to read. I wouldn’t waste much time chasing cache/plugins unless you actually…
Yeah, I’m seeing the same kind of dumb drift on one of mine. Nothing clean, just enough movement to make you waste an hour checking logs like an idiot. If it’s not clustered in one template/section, I’d honestly lean wobble too. GSC’s been extra useless lately.
Yeah, same here. It’s been way less predictable than it used to be. I’ve had pages that should’ve been dead simple just sit there for days, then some random junk gets crawled like it’s urgent. The “quality” lecture doesn’t really explain that part, honestly. Feels more like they’re shuffling stuff around in batches or just being weird with crawl priority. What’s annoying is you can’t even tell if it’s a site issue or just Google being Google for the week. I’ve seen it on clean WP installs, decent internal linking, sitemap submitted, all that boring normal stuff — still delays. So yeah, not just you. It’s been sloppy lately.