Google Discover niche traffic loss since Nov 2019 update

[Shoesmashoo]

Hello, first post so apologies if I have put this in the wrong forum.

I work for a news sites that covers a ton of different subjects and I've been spending the last few years building up a new niche.

Last year, we had a lot of traffic coming in from Google Discover feeds which helped to boost our numbers signicantly.

And then something happened in November 2019, some kind of Google update, and the niche appeared to be wiped from Google Discover.

Other parts of the site still benefit greatly from GD but not us.

Does anyone have any tips for reestablishing on GD using SEO practises?

[Robert Charlton]

Hi Shoesmashoo, and Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

You're in the right place, albeit at a tough time in history at the moment.

Briefly, for now, I find that there was, according to Google's "Data anomalies in Search Console", a glitch in their image click reporting in November, and an internal glitch in their their Discover results in December 2019....

December 8-13, 2019 (Discover)

Because of an internal issue, you will see a data drop in the Performance report for Discover during this period. This issue has been fixed. Please note that this does not reflect any user-facing changes for your site, only the data reporting in Search Console.

Here's the url for this Report, which you'll need to copy and paste into your browser's address bar and then hit enter...

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6211453?hl=en#search_analytics

(The WebmasterWorld redirect script breaks on hash tags... thus, I can't give you a clickable link).

Google reported that the issue had been fixed, though some data was lost... and going forward this issue should not effect results. Nov 2019 was far enough back that I don't remember specifics about the update then... but you might try our WebmasterWorld site search (see search box in the upper right of the page). I'd also try a general organic search in Google as well.

Hopefully some members who had similar issues will respond. I added some specificity to your thread title to attract members here who might know more about it.