John Mueller, a search analyst at Google, wrote a response to a site owner who noticed their site’s ranking dropping in September 2023 and implemented SEO but saw no improvement. John’s response was that it may be due to multiple factors rather than one, and that the site may have been doing well, so it’s time to move on to something new.
John wrote the following on Reddit:
- Server issues probably weren't the problem
- Removing some ads doesn't fix the problem
- Disavowing links doesn't solve the problem
- Buying links won't solve the problem
- Switching to a new SEO plugin doesn't solve the problem
He goes on to explain that sometimes you should “consider what may already be working” and apply what you've learned to “another project.”
Here's what he wrote:
The server downtime probably has nothing to do with the changes you're seeing, it's just bad timing, and any changes that happen after the server downtime are probably just things catching up again.
To be fair, downtime longer than a month (a rough estimate) is very bad for search, since many pages will disappear from search results during that time, and it will take time for those pages to be re-indexed. Even a technically correct 503 response code will have an impact, as will downtime longer than a day or two (and a change of hosting company means that 503 is unlikely to be given).
Core updates will continue to come, so there is room to grow again, but to get to a good place, you really need to rethink your site’s strategy (note: I don’t know which site you’re talking about). This is not about reducing ads from infinity to infinity-1, disavowing 5 links, buying 5 links, or switching to another SEO plugin. This is hard, and for some sites, the business model may not work well with the change (an extreme example: if the maximum you can spend on auto-generated content is 50 cents). If you suspect that you are in the “it doesn’t make sense anymore” camp (I hope you’re not, but cutting your losses and moving on can be good for your peace of mind), consider that you may already be doing well, and that you’ve learned a lot about how to create, optimize, monitor, and debug technically sound sites. All of this can be applied to other projects and the professional work you do with clients.
This reminds me of Glenn Gabe’s kitchen sink approach, which means you can no longer point to one single problem with a site and its Google positioning.
So it looks like the site was affected by the September 2023 helpful content update, and has not yet recovered from that update.
Discussion on Reddit forum.