How To Let Google Know That Your Google Search, Discover & News Traffic Significantly Dropped

Nov 20, 2023 - 7:31 am 106 by

Woman Computer Upset Google Logo

On Friday, Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said you can reply to a thread on X or post a help thread in Google's forums to let him know about sites that saw a significant drop in Google Search, Google Discover and Google News traffic recently.

It also seems that Lily Ray is building a Google Sheet with this data to pass along to Danny Sullivan at Google.

Sullivan posted on X, "If people want to share their sites adding to here or in the forums, happy to pass on. But the bug we found was resolved. We can look further at some of the examples, though."

This was in response to these posts:

Lily posted a form on her site that you can also fill out, which she said, "To everyone who messaged me yesterday regarding recent traffic drops in Google Discover, Top Stories, News etc. Please help me stay organized by filling out the below form. I am putting together something formal to send to Google."

Of course, sending Google your site doesn't mean you will see any benefit. I mean, here are some of the responses Danny Sullivan posted to some complaints already:

John Mueller responded to a similar complaint on Reddit about an SEO doing SEO for 20 years and nothing is working recently anymore. Mueller wrote, "I'll go out on a limb, but this strategy sounds like even if things work out, you'll be back here with the next update." "I don't have a simple one-tip-that-SEOs-hate, but my recommendation (feel free to ignore) would be to take a step back and think about the kinds of sites that align with your interests, knowledge, experience, and which could give longer-term value to the web overall. Nothing will last forever, the web is constantly adjusting to new users' needs and interests, but still, there are things that will almost certainly be short-term-hacks (if you need to ask yourself "how long until Google notices", right?), and ways that at least have a chance of being longer-lasting," he added.

So I guess you can let Google know about your site to see if Google feels they need to make adjustments to their algorithms to better surface sites and the types of content you produce. I have no idea if it will make a difference but what do you have to lose at this point?

Forum discussion at X.

Update: Google said enough reports have been submitted:

 

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