Massive traffic drop after ~20 min 403 during peak hours

[adsseller]

Hi everyone, I really need help or real-world experiences because I’m pretty lost.

My site returned 403 (Forbidden) during peak traffic hours for about 20 minutes. Right after that, I saw a massive hit:

About 90% organic traffic loss

Google seems to have deindexed images and videos (disappeared from Google Images and/or results)

I’m still losing pages in Google (previously indexed pages are dropping out)

New pages aren’t indexing quickly; when they do, it takes a long time

In Google Search Console, I’m seeing “Temporary processing error” related to the sitemap/URL inspection (I’ve read it can be a Google-side issue, but the timing matches everything happening)

The 403 issue is fixed and the site loads fine for users, but after 72 hours it hasn’t recovered, and it still feels like it’s getting worse.

I’d like to hear from anyone who has been through something similar:

Can a short 403 window (only minutes) cause this kind of damage, especially for images/videos?

Does this usually recover on its own?

What’s a realistic recovery timeline (days vs weeks)?

Could the sitemap “Temporary processing error” be related, or is it likely unrelated?

What should I verify first (based on evidence, not guesses) to stop further deindexing and restore indexing?

If you’ve recovered from something like this, please share what happened and what you did. Thanks.

 

[protocols]

Depends how competitive the keywords are.

Are you sure this was once-off and not a pattern unnoticed over long period of time?

 

[Starblazer]

You might've lost trust signals due to 403 errors. Fix any server side issues that caused the error and continue publishing content. It should return to previous state. If the problem persists, then you need to audit off-page SEO to see if there is any spam campaign against your site.

 

[adsseller]

Yes mabe can be other thing. But the traffic down in same day of i get the server down. After 1/2 hours.
Its hard think about other thing.

The content is good, the website have 3kk of user month... in 2 days down 90% and lost 4k of pages in index, imagens and videos too...
it is unreal, the website grown 20% every month...and down 90% in 2 days?

I think is other thing i dont know..

I already fix the erros, but the traffic dont rise, new pages not index..

 

[adsseller]

 

[zocx]

This looks like a suspension from Google. Google didn’t like something on your website, so it was suspended. Small issues like 403 errors or even the website being down for 24+ hours usually won’t cause such a strong drop in Google search results.

In my opinion, the website was either suspended or even banned by Google. A suspension is almost the same as a ban—the site may still appear in search for a while, but it won’t recover. I’ve had websites suspended by Google before, and they never grew again.

I’d wait a few days, and if nothing changes, move on to the next project. This is Google; you can’t really do anything about it.

 

[LondoN eXtream]

It looks like a penalty or something.
Usually when your website returns errors like 403 crawlers will come back later to check again before doing assumptions.

Check the page indexing coverage and also activate cloudflare with the "Always On" feature.

 

[Charlotte hayes]

Short 403 windows can mess up crawling and indexing fix uptime check logs resubmit sitemaps force recrawls then wait 1–3 weeks for recovery if everything stays stable.

 

[jamie3000]

When you fetch as google does it look ok?

 

[hideath]

When you fetch as google does it look ok?

+1 for this,
you should double check if the problem is fixed for google bots as well,

otherwise, nothing much to do, just be patient about it and keep up the work,
if google is frequently crawling/recrawling your pages/website, something similar could happen, and recovery takes longer,

simply because any crawled pages returning any types of errors would take time to get recrawled,
and could be any of google random bugs (yes, they're pain in the *** especially nowadays)

 

[LondonLife]

A 20-minute 403 at peak hours usually means your firewall or server is blocking traffic spikes, causing Google to lose trust and pull your rankings.

 

[Biycchu]

There is no way to recover it. May be you can get rank back after a year. Two of my websites faced the same issue without any errors. I clearly saw that Google penalized your site, just like mine. May I know your niche?

 

[Selieepipes]

A short 403 spike can cause temporary chaos, especially for images and video crawling, but it’s usually not permanent. I’d double-check server logs, crawl errors, and sitemap accessibility first, then give Google some time — recoveries like this often take days to a few weeks once stability is restored.

 

[laur.laurix]

View attachment 495008

Damn son...... nothing you can do at this point just light up some candles and pray to your god

 

[tommshardy]

Thanks for sharing—this is really helpful, I’m looking forward to seeing how others handled a similar situation.

 

[1SEOWarrior]

it seems you lost trust to google. It gave a bad signal to google. It might take some to recover. Try some quality content and high authority links.