Google Discover Traffic Drop On August 10th

On Sep 17, 2020

Since August 10th or so, there has been a number of publishers complaining that the traffic Google sends them via Google Discover has dropped off the cliff. The complaints have not subsided yet and some feel it has to do with the Google Search glitch on August 10th. Google did say they are investigating it but we have not hear back from them on the topic yet.

It is unclear what is the cause or if this is a bug or not. But a nice number of publishers are complaining that their Google Discover based traffic has literally went from a nice amount of traffic to zero traffic on August 10th. It has been over a month and there is no real improvement yet.

There are threads at WebmasterWorld and several at Google Webmaster Help forums and even posts on Twitter. I know Google’s John Mueller was asked about this several times in his hangouts and he said the team is investigating it. But he has no news to share yet, I believe.

Here is some of what people shared publicly on this topic.

10th august Google Glitch : It seems that the problem is not solved on Google Discover for several publishers, at least in Europe (FR, ES, PL, etc.) Here is an example from a spanish website => Discover trafic down to zero. @JohnMu @dannysullivan : Is it under investigation ? ???? pic.twitter.com/icLAfQQfeL
— Virginie Clève (@largow) September 7, 2020

Yeah, there is something strange going on since then. I’m also seeing massive increases in crawling as well as decreases at about the same time
— Valentin Pletzer (@VorticonCmdr) September 4, 2020

Here are two screenshots showing the Discover traffic situation that coincided with the 8/10 indexing bug. Just the US and UK flatline there, while other countries are fine. The site owner reached out to me since this was very strange based on their history with Discover. https://t.co/FVndwBEIQi pic.twitter.com/1Y61vNfN1s
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 16, 2020

I am not sure if this is affecting a small number of publishers who are really loud or if it is a much larger issue. I suspect it is not a massive issue but I am not sure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help.