Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Yeah, same here. Last few days have been a mess — not even a clean drop, just that annoying up/down garbage that makes you second-guess everything. I’m with you on not touching anything yet. Half the time you “fix”…
From my experience, yeah, same garbage here. One client site did the little “up for 48 hours, now back in the mud” routine and there’s nothing in Search Console worth getting excited about. Honestly I’m with you on the advice too — half of it is just people dressing up guesses. If it settles in a week, whatever. If not, then it’s another round of Google being weird for no good reason.
Yeah, same story here on a couple sites. Indexed fine, rankings just got shuffled into the trash. If it’s affiliate stuff, I’d be looking hard at the money pages and any thin comparison/template pages first. Google’s been pretty brutal with that lately.
Yeah, that’s the worst kind of drop. When it’s indexed but just gets kneecapped overnight, it usually isn’t some neat fix either. I’ve seen that on affiliate stuff a few times — one update and Google just decides the site’s “less useful” or whatever excuse of the week. If you’ve already checked the obvious tech stuff, I’d be looking at page groups / templates and whether the money pages got hit harder than the rest.
Yeah, that sounds like the usual “not broken, just punished” thing. Annoying part is when Search Console looks boring but traffic still gets absolutely smoked. From what I see,
In most cases, yeah, I’ve seen that exact “everything’s indexed but the site’s just dead” mess before. Usually means Google didn’t break the site, it just decided it doesn’t like it anymore for whatever reason this week. I’d be looking at whether the hit was on a specific section first, not the whole thing. Affiliate sites get weirdly lopsided when an update rolls through — sometimes it’s just the money pages getting buried and the rest of the site limping along like nothing happened. Also, if you’ve got any of those thin comparison pages or templated junk pages, Google seems to go after those pretty hard lately. Not saying that’s definitely it, just… that’s been the pattern on a couple sites I’ve dealt with.
Realistically, yeah, same here. One client site got hit hard after the update and the junk pages are still floating around like nothing happened, which is the annoying part. “Just improve content” is such lazy advice when the crawl/index mess is still there. I’m seeing a slow bleed, not some clean recovery.
Honestly, Personally, yeah, I’ve seen this pattern before. Half the time it’s not even the update itself, it’s just the bots noticing some form field changed and hammering it harder for a few days. If it started right after the update though, I’d be looking at whatever got loosened up — signup form, comment handling, maybe a plugin conflict that broke part of the spam filtering. I’ve had Akismet or a custom honeypot just quietly stop doing much after an update and it turns into a stupid little mess fast. Not saying the update caused it 100%, but I wouldn’t assume it’s random either. Just my experience.
Yeah, I’d still lean site-side first. If GSC isn’t showing anything ugly and it’s mostly a bunch of pages just going dead, that’s usually not “big update” behavior to me. I’ve had that happen from dumb stuff like canonicals changing, internal links getting messed up, or some template/render issue after a deploy. Could still be an update, sure, but I wouldn’t start there.
Yep, seeing the same kind of mess. I’m not touching anything until I’ve got a few more days of data, because Monday/Tuesday swings are basically useless half the time. But if the same money pages stay buried while some trash URLs keep floating up, that’s when I start checking internal links, canonicals, and whether some plugin/theme nonsense got nudged in the update. And yeah, Google doing the “random junk page promotion” thing never gets less annoying.
Yeah, that’s been happening a lot more than people want to admit. Once Google actually settles on the cleaner set, a bunch of these sites just get exposed for what they were riding on. I’ve seen it on WP stuff especially — canonicals, duplicates, weird archive junk, all that nonsense. And yeah, it’s annoying when the traffic looks “fine” right up until the floor drops out. Then everyone acts surprised.
Yeah, that’s the part people keep hand-waving away. I’ve seen it on a few WP sites too — once Google stops wobbling around and actually commits to the cleaner set, the traffic that was hanging off junk URLs just disappears. Not “update killed it” in some dramatic way, just the site finally getting judged on what it actually is In most cases,. And the canonical stuff… yeah, I don’t trust defaults much either. I’ve had Googlebot clearly hit the wrong variant first and spend ages sorting itself out. By then the damage is kind of done. Honestly the annoying part is how “fine” it looks right up until it isn’t. Just my experience.
Yeah, it’s been ugly. I’ve seen a few pages basically get “soft deleted” like that — not even a dramatic drop, just gone. Usually for me it’s some combo of thin internal linking + too much samey content across the cluster. Google loves pretending it’s random until you dig into logs and see crawl…
In my opinion, Yeah, that “indexed but dead” thing is the part that drives me nuts. Usually means it’s not some neat little technical fix, it’s just Google deciding to shuffle the deck and your site got the bad hand. I’d be looking at whether it was just a couple templates or page groups that got hit first, cause when it’s sitewide and messy like that, it’s rarely one obvious broken thing.
Personally, yeah, that’s the same crap I’ve been seeing too. The “random old junk survives while the pages that actually pull money get clipped” thing is so familiar at this point it’s almost funny, except it isn’t. If nothing changed on your end, I wouldn’t be rushing to rewrite the whole site like some SEO Twitter genius would tell you to do. I’d be looking at crawl first, then maybe template-level stuff. Affiliate sites with a bunch of samey page types seem to get hit in chunks now, not page-by-page in any sane way. Google just decides it’s bored, I swear. If you’ve got logs, check whether those dropped pages are still getting hit. That’s usually where the answer is. If crawl fell off a cliff, Search Console is basically just there to annoy you.