Recent content by mrneedles

With the same website?

When have you observed the drop exactly?

No recovery.

Actually HCU Update is still ongoing. Google told on Twitter it takes longer than 2 weeks. So, what you see might as well be from HCU, or both updates simultaneously.

Spam Update man. You were penalized by the algorithm. Try to figure out why, fix the issues as fast as you can and wait for a Core Update. Overstaffing your text with keywords, low-quality and AI text, spammy SEO links. Check those.

Then the problem is not with your robots.txt. Check if you block Google with your HTML or your HTTP headers. Also, Google must re-visit your affected pages in the first place.

Well, Ahrefs is not the tool to measure load speeds in the first place. Change the tool you measure this KPI with. I would use Google Page Speed, both imitations and user data for the last 28 days (you want to look up and optimize mobile performance). There are a couple great tools that...

When has it happened? Did you created links to your site? When have you been hit?

Go with the following, no need to specify an emty disallow here: User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Also, check again if you have noindex in your HTML or if your server gives noindex directive.

why do you have an empty Disavow: ?

Probably the second round of the update. Wait till its over and then at least till the end of January, after all the holidays. Traffic will be uneven now. I would not make any drastic changes on the site till then, unless you are sure you have fucked up somewhere.

It will take till the end of this week to roll out in full. On which day exactly have you observed the drop?

Google should delete 4xx from index in days or 2-3 weeks. However, they will continue visiting those pages for months, years maybe. That's normal. If you don't plan to reinstate those URLs and you create a completely new website architecture, set 410 code to them. This code tells that those...

More likely Google implements the technology first in some nice and shiny mass product (feature) in the coming years. I am 100% sure they are aware and plan how to counter such disruption risks.

For them it's Christmas the year round. Just don't forget to push updates and more ads into the SERPs.