I finally saw a real drop in organic traffic after a core update - but it wasn't what everyone blamed it on

So back in March, my site took a hit after one of those Google core updates. Dropped about 40% in visits over two weeks. Every forum I looked at was saying it was thin content or bad backlinks. But I had been using the same content strategy for a year with steady growth. What actually changed? I had switched my internal linking plugin to a cheaper one three weeks before the update. Swapped back to the old one and traffic recovered about halfway in a month. Anyone else notice the tool you use for basic site structure messing with rankings more than the content itself?

2 comments

2 Comments

parker1835d ago

Man, I had almost the exact same thing happen with a lazy loading plugin I swapped in... thought it was harmless but my bounce rate shot up like crazy. Switched back to the old one and things started leveling out within a couple weeks. It's wild how those little backend changes can mess with Google way more than we expect.

adamthompson5d ago

Guess I'll go revert that plugin now while nobody's looking.