3 of my pages were hit by the October core update. What to do next?

[nvc]

I've got hit by this core update. 3 of my top performing pages (including the front page) were hit and disappeared from the SERP. The other part of the site is performing well and impressions/clicks are increasing. Do you think I can do something to recover? I guess that I am hit by the spam update for couple of rel="sponsored" links that I received(only pages that received these links are hit). And these links came not by my fault. Some spammy sites reposted one of my guest posts and added "sponsored" to my link. I already asked the site owners to remove these links. Any recommendations what to do next?

[brucemurphy]

We too.. gotta massive drop in Sep and Oct

[baldidiot]

I guess that I am hit by the spam update for couple of rel="sponsored" links that I received

Rel="sponsored" is the correct way (according to google) to handle sponsored posts/links. They're telling google to ignore the links because they've been paid for. Obviously that defeats the purpose of buying a link, but that's what google wants.

This is from the horses mouth:

"Google does understand that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes. It's not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value to the <a> tag."

So having rel="sponsored" links shouldn't affect your site.

[nvc]

So how do you explain only the pages with rel="sponsored" backlinks are hit(disappeared)? I understand what you mean and you're right but if that isn't the case then what else?

[baldidiot]

Depends what else is going on with the pages.

[chaumi]

Yeah although you seem to have some evidence, those links just don't sound like the cause, and from a number of perspectives. And Baldidiot already gave one big reason.

1. I'd hold for a bit, stuff is still going on right.
2. Look at the pages. How are they constructed, are they sufficient quality, have competitors changed, did you do anything to those pages (not necessarily just recently, it could have been 3-6 months ago in some scenarios). is there anything different between them and the pages that are still performing, etc etc

If none of that throws any light...and you get to the end of the current update and they're still nowhere, put one of them up here for analysis and comments (not the homepage because there could be other reasons that disappeared for a specific query).

[dannyx]

You could try submitting pages to GSC for re-indexing, such as every few days.
I used to have errors with mobile sites according to Google, but in reality there were no such problems. After several submissions for re-indexing after a month or two, the problem disappeared.

I'm not sure if this will help, but it probably won't hurt.

[loul07]

Maybe an idea : So, have you thought about your external link on GamblingAware in the footer of each of your pages? I'm not an SEO expert, but I was penalized for that on my Belgian site. Once I removed the link, it took a year and a half to regain traffic. You don't have to remove it entirely, just consider featuring it on your homepage and not on all pages of your site.

[newcustomeroffer]

A couple of your images have blank alt tags, so alt="" - tiny thing but can only be positive to put something descriptive in there.

[chaumi]

I'd say it is worth looking at stuff down to the level of previous couple of suggestions, and yes, something like those could be contributing.

I'd suggest unlikely it's just one factor at that level, though.

With the og link at the bottom, you might be asking 'it's the same on all the unaffected pages,why not affecting those' (and if we're talking about the Begamble link, personally I'd have thought it would be a benefit, but I guess could be wrong)

With the missing ALT text, maybe it's also missing on unaffected pages. Why no negative impact on those.

Something to consider with that thought process, though. If it is a (simply/controllable) solvable factor at the root of why those 3 pages have been impacted, and that factor is prevalent on plenty of other pages too, the it could be that it's just those pages haven't been crawled/processed yet, or potentially even the search terms those rank for haven't been processed by G in the update yet.

No harm in looking for answers, and solving 'minor' issues like some mentioned is a no-brainer and won't harm, but still may be worth giving it some time yet before doing anything drastic.

[allfreechips]

I would assume the biggest issue is links to your site.. I have no looked at them but spammy incoming links seems to have hurt some sites

[dannyx]

I would assume the biggest issue is links to your site.. I have no looked at them but spammy incoming links seems to have hurt some sites

Many years ago, yes.
Now as I look at various sites, you can have millions of spammy links and nothing changes, it seems google ignores them completely.
You can find in many articles and statements from google itself that it is no longer like it used to be.

It was changed I guess to exclude spammer attacks on sites. And that's a very good thing.

[allfreechips]

Many years ago, yes.
Now as I look at various sites, you can have millions of spammy links and nothing changes, it seems google ignores them completely.
You can find in many articles and statements from google itself that it is no longer like it used to be.

It was changed I guess to exclude spammer attacks on sites. And that's a very good thing.

Yes, and the devaluing of links may be the issue.....

[xecutable]

Or could be just about ANYTHING. I've seen pages get demolished and had even shared the graphs with a few people here, during Dec 2022 update, just to recover and surpass their old positions 22 days later, without doing any changes, adding any links or "fixing" anything. They remain recovered 'till this day.

The worst thing you can do now is panic and start tinkering things while the updates are still rolling out.

[casionmark]

There are a lot of reports of sites with pages dropping out then coming back in. I would wait until the end of the current round of updates. Your pages could well come back.

[Martyn]

Let the dust settle and see what position you're in after that. Things may not be broken, you may just be bounced around for the shortterm.

[newcustomeroffer]

Let the dust settle and see what position you're in after that. Things may not be broken, you may just be bounced around for the shortterm.

Yes there's still loads of movement at present that I can see, so drawing any firm conclusions at this stage could be wrong.

[robertanderson]

I agree with most of the comments that we need to wait. Sometimes it seems to me that this is a setup, Google demotes the page and sees what webmasters start to fix. If you start fixing a lot of things in a panic, then for Google it can be a confirmation that you have done some manipulations with the site that can harm your pages.

But I personally think that it's better not to make changes all at once, but to prepare:
- Review the links, and although Google claims that they do not take into account spammy links, there is still disavow and everyone uses it. You also need to check those links that were normal before, because with the update, many sites got caught and it turns out that you can be linked to from sites under the filter.
- Check your texts to see if they respond to the user's intent, if Google sees them correctly, if your content has been copied to parasitic sites.
- Check the technical part of the site as a whole.

And when the update is over, you will have a ready-made action plan that you can implement immediately.


But again, this is my personal opinion!

[content]

I noticed the LCB forum shows a traffic trend chart for each section. Every section has the same decrease. While it doesn't display dates on it, I think they - well maybe just the forum section - may have gotten hit by the core update. I'm sure they'll be fine, though it was interesting to see how every section followed the same trend.

I was thinking about it recently, if there were ai detection implemented into google, forum content should do better, though I do not think that is something google has fully implemented something like that(and might never, as the ai assisted content can still be good content, though when it comes to feedback and support obviously people want to read stuff from real people).

Anyway, my site is not big enough yet and is still pretty new and just as unloved by google so far as ever, so this update makes no difference to me at this time, though found it interesting enough to share.

[chaumi]

if there were ai detection implemented into google, forum content should do better, though I do not think that is something google has fully implemented something like that(and might never, as the ai assisted content can still be good content, though when it comes to feedback and support obviously people want to read stuff from real people).

There was plenty of evidence recently that UGC sites got boosts, in particular Quora and Reddit. But I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that 'niche' forums might, too.

And we know from experience here that forum threads can be targeted with (obvious) AI-generated answers. Though that does seem to have died off a bit (or the responses just got more clever!).