I have over the past few month revamped an old website, and so far as I can tell users appear to appreciate the upgrade. I'm seeing far better engagement. Unfortunately Google doesn't share this opinion.
Let me start with the background, the site in question provides statistics with interactive charts as well as ratings and reviews, all related to a certain type of event. The site never really took off with Google but traffic was consistent over the years. When Covid hit the industry as whole took a dump, so I just gave up on the site, as it was getting old and needed a lot of work. But, despite not adding updates the traffic remained steady and even grew over the past few years. So Late last year I decided to give it another go. I spent the next few month rebuilding the site, and the new version is much faster, nicer and more interactive and just far better than it ever was.
Despite the improvement, the site traffic dropped by more than half within days of taking the new version live (that was in mid-June). This week as a result of the latest Google update, traffic has fallen even more to a trickle.
Clearly there is something that I have done that Google isn't liking. I need to figure out what that is. I have narrowed it down to few things. Here they are:
1- The site features many (hundreds of annual events) I have not been able to update the data for all these events, as it is time consuming and an ongoing process. Of these events, some are no longer being held. I have not classified these, I simply have a list of events and the dates, so some events are showing old dates, when then should be showing the upcoming dates. Should I create an archived section and put events that are not update, or no longer held in that section, should I no-index those pages?
2- My h1 tags say "event statistics, rating and reviews". But, with not much traffic, I have very few actual reviews. Is the fact that I am calling it a review but don't actually have reviews (in most cases) an issue. Should I just say "event statistics", and then leave the review, and ratings widgets in place. Or should I remove that completely?
3- "Scraped content", the site doesn't have any scraped content per-se, but it does provide information for events that do have their own website. My site features a description of the event that basically repeats the information of the event's website. I also have the stats, but could it be that Google doesn't assign much value to my stats, and thus assumes that there is no "added" value. The stats are in the form of graphics, with an alternate table view, and brief text that summarizes the chart. Eg: people in x demographic account for 50% of participants. It's not that simple but that is the general idea.
4- I have also changed URLs, but I have diligently worked to redirect the old URLs to the new ones, and so far as I can tell that is working. While I still had traffic, it was going to the right places, and I wasn't getting any 404 or other errors.
Any ideas which of these issue could be the problem or ideas on how to test them?
