Member Avatar for GordonUK

Hi everyone,

I just want some help with a traffic issue that is affecting my website. After the most recent google update my website lost about 5,0000 visitors per month in traffic. Previous to that it was successfully gaining 2,0000 + new visitors per month.

Does anyone have an idea why my website lost so much traffic due to this recent google update?? I have heard of websites being affected by between 1-4% but never 40%.

The one issue I am aware of that could affect the rankings of keywords on google is that I have about 200-350 issues of duplicate content involving videos on my website. But this is out of 25,000 pages with original content.

Could these 200-350 items of duplicate content be the reasons why my keywords has been downgraded on google and why I have seen such a big drop in my monthly traffic figures of 5,0000 visitors?

And If I fix this issue of duplicate content does that mean I will re-gain the 5,000 visitors per month I had previously lost?

Or are there any other possible reasons why google could downgrade the ranking of keywords after the latest update?

Many thanks

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Dani AI

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Quick, practical checklist and fixes to triage a large, sudden drop without guessing at causes.

Start by confirming what kind of hit this is: check Google Search Console for Manual Actions and for messages; use the Performance (or Search Analytics) report and your analytics to find the exact landing pages and queries that lost traffic; compare date ranges to isolate when the drop began; and scan server logs to confirm Googlebot is still crawling the pages you expect. These facts tell you whether to treat the problem as a sitewide quality issue, a specific group of pages, or a manual penalty (see for why algorithm hits can look large).

For the video-duplicate set you mentioned, pick one consolidation approach and apply it consistently. Options (pros/cons in short):

  • 301 redirect to a single canonical URL — strongest when duplicate pages should not remain indexed.
  • rel="canonical" — good when duplicates must exist for users but you want Google to prefer one URL (it is a hint, not a command).
  • meta robots "noindex,follow" — use when pages must remain accessible to users but should be removed from search.

Example implementations:

# Apache (simple)
Redirect 301 /videos/old-video-page.html https://www.example.com/videos/canonical-video-page/
<!-- put in the <head> of duplicate pages -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/videos/canonical-video-page/" />
<!-- put in the <head> if you want the page deindexed -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">

Also add unique video metadata and a transcript on the canonical page, include VideoObject JSON-LD and a video sitemap, then resubmit the sitemap in Search Console.

Prioritize fixes by traffic and business value, not by count: start with pages that lost the most visits or conversions. Audit low-value or ad-heavy pages as suggested, and check backlink quality as and recommended. After changes, monitor Search Console and analytics — recovery can take weeks to months, and there are no guarantees, but careful consolidation plus improved content and technical cleanup gives you the best chance of regaining rank.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for canadafred

You likely have an excess of poorly constructed useless content that the search engine downgraded. I'm visualizing that you have web pages smothered with ads and essentially of little value to the Internet. Maybe I'm wrong but consider how important your web pages really are to the world.

Member Avatar for getmused

Those duplicate contents really can affect your traffic, have you try to use Google search to locate your site by using your keyword? You should remove these contents and replace them with original ones, including the video unless you provided source information fo it.

Member Avatar for Dani

DaniWeb was hit by the first Panda algorithm update and ended up losing about 60% of our traffic (which we later gained back a few months later). Google has said that the latest version affected about 1-4% of all sites on the Internet, but not that individual sites were only affected by 1-4%. Individual sites are affected anywhere from 20-80%!!

Duplicate content can definitely be a huge issue. There could be other things wrong too. You can ask for a site audit in the Website Reviews forum.

Member Avatar for getmused

Getting higher page rank will not automatically higher traffic. Removing the duplicate contents is important and should be your top priority right now. Then you can replace them with interesting and useful contents. Also, check your backlinks, are they come from high-quality sites or not.

Member Avatar for seowright

As per the google update now google giving main focus to website content. If you want to rank your website into google then you must need quality content which is unqiue and try to build backlink from some good quality and high PR web directories, social bookmarking sites, forums etc. All these things will help you to rank better in search engine.

Member Avatar for GordonUK

Thanks everyone for all your posts and for your advice too.

My SEO company have suggested that I keep the duplicate videos but add a permanent re-direct code to their urls so that they are effectively being re-directed to just one url which we will keep live. I am in the process of doing that now to all the duplicate video content on my website.

I will also look into getting the pages to load quicker as they are graphic intensive and do take a little while longer to load. I have heard that this could be significant too in google`s eyes and can also affect your traffic.

I will carry out these changes and let you know how everything goes ok.

Many thanks.
Gordon

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