Google Discover dropped to zero after August glitch

[MayankParmar]

My Google Discover traffic in the US/UK/CA and other regions dropped dramatically after Google's indexing glitch was reported last month. I still have traffic from India, South Africa and a few other countries, probably because the Google search glitch was rolled out in the US and Europe only?

My Discover traffic was doing just fine for more than a year, then dropped on August 10/11 to basically zero.

At the time of making this post, there's no recovery yet.

[imgur.com...]

Competitors are doing just fine. Also, I publish original articles regularly and I often get cited for my original work. I don't see my articles in Discover, but I do see sites that have cited me in their 2nd or 3rd para. Sucks to see others being promoted for your work, but nothing can be done - this is how Google works now :)

I have checked the server logs - No increase in 404. No increase in 5xx errors. Site is stable and fine in terms of speed. No errors anywhere.

I also flagged the problem to John, but he has nothing to share :) Also, I'm sure I'm not alone. A few other publishers have also flagged the same problem, but nobody cares, especially when you're not from the US.

I am not creating this thread for solutions. I just wanted to let you all know that Google could kill your business overnight, call it a glitch, and refuse to provide an explanation.

The backlinks, the original, fewer ads, good design nothing will work if Google's algorithm hates your site.

I've been blogging for over five years now. I get cited/linked back naturally and I have a great link profile. Despite my original work, I wouldn't appear in the Top Stories or front page of Google News, and now I'm out from Google Discover too.

I've been tweeting John the examples of how my original work is never rewarded, but those who cited me do appear. The examples are perfect and expose the reality that Google's algorithm truly sucks. I first tweeted the example in 2017 and they have made ZERO changes to fix this behaviour.

In fact, after May update, scrappers appear in Top Stories and Google Newsfeed. What's Google's solution? DMCA - as if it is a piece of cake ;)

Conclusion....? It's all Google's fault - I have nothing to fix :)

[Robert Charlton]

MayankParmar, you might want to take a look at this thread from Jul 20, 2020, and compare it against your pages.

Google Discover Now Refers to E-A-T
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5002904.htm [webmasterworld.com]

I first tweeted the example in 2017 and they have made ZERO changes to fix this behaviour

They have probably put a note about your tweet in a special place and now can't find it. ;)

[MayankParmar]

I have read the new guidelines for Discover... but I worked on E-A-T (author profile, etc) last year and everything has been fairly stable. I'm very sure the drop is caused by the August glitch.

A few others are also affected: [twitter.com...]

[janvitos]

I'm in the same boat. I was getting very good traffic from Discover for the past year or so. But on August 28, Discover went silent and hasn't picked up since.

Over the past year, the longest period without Discover traffic was always 3-7 days, then traffic would start flowing again and last for days, even weeks.

But now, Discover traffic has dropped to almost zero for over 2 weeks and I'm quite afraid it might never come back.

[MayankParmar]

Correct. Discover decline period was always 5 days for me. It's been more than a month and Discover is still dead :(

[tangor]

These g tools and "upgrades" tend to roll out, look good for a bit (to them) then go wonky and are eventually discontinued after webmasters tied it out.

Not saying that is the case here, but we do have anecdotal evidence this has happened many times. One reason I don't rush to play when these things come out.

YMMV!

[TalkativeEditorial]

Either of you seeing any recovery yet?

[MayankParmar]

No, it's flat dead.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Definitely something strange going on (well stranger than usual) in the last few days. Personal feed is a complete mess.

[topaz]

Google Discover Traffic Drop On August 10th
[seroundtable.com...]


Between 8/5 and 8/10, it started off with all US/CAN/UK discover traffic flatling to zero on one site of mine. From around 9/10, I lost the rest of the world.

[MayankParmar]

That sucks... but at least it's being reported now. Hopefully, they'll fix it soon. It's definitely a bug.

[janvitos]

I hope you're right MayankParmar and hopefully it's just a bug.

But I'm also wondering if it's not just by design to give more visibility to mainstream media.

Looking at my personnal Discover feed over the past few days has been really disappointing. I mostly see articles from big publishers about subjects I really don't care about. I used to love Discover and how it showed me articles about interesting subjects from many different sources, but now it's a complete useless piece of junk. I haven't even bothered looking at Discover in the recent days as it just reminds me of my boring Facebook News Feed, which I also stopped using a few months ago.

[TalkativeEditorial]

This is so strange @janvitos because my personal feed is just the opposite these last few days. Usually, it's a fairly decent mix, but mine has been packed with irrelevant topics from ver random (and not very good) blogs. I also like the variety it usually gives me because I enjoy finding new blogs to follow, but since Monday it has sucked.

[janvitos]

@TalkativeEditorial, maybe we didn't get the same update? I'm in Canada and it seems like Canada was affected by the August 10th glitch.

Your Discover Feed seems to be more like what I had before, except for the irrelevant part, which I agree totally sucks. But I definitely had much more smaller blogs with interesting content.

I really enjoyed having more diverse sources in my Feed. I discovered new websites which I had never heard of before, on subjects that really mattered to me.

[MayankParmar]

Only the bug is likely to take our entire Discover overnight. If they were favouring big publishers, we'll see a gradual decline in traffic. An overnight or sudden drop indicates a bug. And I think you can fix/customize the Discover feed by subscribing to topics.

[janvitos]

That makes sense MayankParmar and I surely hope you're right.

Lets hope Google acknowledges and fixes the issue soon before it takes a hard hit on us.

Since Discover traffic has dropped, we have seen an overall 50% decline in revenue.

[topaz]

Also related..in the Google News app and elsewhere you can "follow" a publisher. You can see the number of your followers with Publisher Center.
Strange that one of my sites with 600 followers is getting no traffic from News....I mean those people...specifically indicated they want to see me.

If an app user takes the time to curate who they follow and what their topic interests are, why doesn't Google honor that? The top 5 articles on News are always from the same handful of 12 big sites. The 'For You' section is a joke right now.

[janvitos]

I hear you topaz. I have lots of followers on Google News and I get barely any visits.

But looking at my stats, it seems like Google News wasn't affected by the last glitch since I'm still getting a constant small flow from it.

If you have followers, it means people can find your publication and subscribe to it, which is a good first step. I don't think you can expect lots of traffic from Google News unless you make it to the Top Articles. And I'm really not sure what it takes to make it there.

On the other hand, Discover traffic is still close to zero.

These are uncertain times my friends, and I hate uncertainty.

[tangor]

These are uncertain times my friends, and I hate uncertainty.

Relish uncertainty! If it was all certain there'd be nothing to do, nothing to lose, nothing to gain, no adventure in life.

Besides, it is was all certain we'd have nothing to chat about!

[janvitos]

Very interesting changes happening on Discover today.

First of all, I got an article on Discover with good traffic (not great) from France, my first in 3 weeks. It's not from the category of articles that usually goes viral on Discover, but it's better than nothing.

Second of all, my Discover feed has radically changed today and most of the mainstream publishers are gone. Now my feed is almost identical to what it used to be before the glitch, which is a nice mix of smaller and larger publishers, but mostly articles that are much more tailored to me and my topic.

I don't want to sound too optimist, but things are changing. Let's hope it's not just a glitch on top of a glitch.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Oh for a bit of consistency. It's the opposite here again. Personal feed has shown some improvements, but Discover impressions pretty much zero'd again yesterday (been notably low since the tools started showing instability).

[MayankParmar]

US/UK still zero for me, but I do get traffic from South Africa, India, Denmark, etc. Probably because glitch was noticed more in the US, UK.

[TalkativeEditorial]

Looking pretty grim for us still. The weirdest thing is that even some of our newly published content is showing up as a featured snippet pretty quickly.... the kind of stuff that would usually fly on Discover. But all of a sudden this week, Discover thinks we do not exist.

[TalkativeEditorial]

How is everyone's Discover traffic looking today? We still seem to not exist, despite new content being featured snippets in the SERPS. Ridiculous.

[MayankParmar]

Here's what it looks like today, yesterday and for the past one month [imgur.com...]

(This is valid for US, UK, CA, and a few other regions. I do have normal Discover traffic from South Africa, India, Romania, Denmark, etc).

[TalkativeEditorial]

Unbelievably frustrating.

[MayankParmar]

Yup. Still can't believe I lost all traffic because of their glitch and they don't even want to acknowledge it publicly. At the moment, there's nothing that gives me hope of recovery.

[tangor]

Query: Other than "Discovery", how is the rest of your g activities going?

In other words, are you doing okay?

Aside: There's more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. Are you doing okay otherwise?

Most of the g shortcuts to race to the top have been more vaporware than solid results ... which is one reason why I never participated in the "new stuff".

[MayankParmar]

Doing normal in SERPs and elsewhere. We're all included for Discover automatically based on a number of factors, but some of us got incorrectly kicked because of the August 10/11 glitch.

[TalkativeEditorial]

In other words, are you doing okay?

Better than expected in the SERPS, including dominating a few featured snippets. Core Web Vitals around 96% "good URLS". Which, believe it or not, actually makes things worse. If we were ranking poorly and dropping, had terrible Web Vitals, didn't see newsletter subs growing, the Discover downturn would be understandable.