50% reduction in organic traffic, 4x increase in referring domains (most are SPAM) - help!

Sololeveling1 · Monday at 10:03 AM

Hi there,

I run a small company that has historically done quite well with SEO. But recently I noticed organic traffic has dropped considerably (-50% YoY). I know this could be to do with AI overviews and the 'crocodile effect' but I am also thinking it could be the huge increase in referring domains that are being marked as Spam by Ahrefs (see image). In May 2026, I had 150 and in August 2026, I have 580 referring domains, most of which are marked as Spam.

Not sure what to do!

Jeronimoia · Monday at 10:10 AM

Sololeveling1 said:
Hi there,

I run a small company that has historically done quite well with SEO. But recently I noticed organic traffic has dropped considerably (-50% YoY). I know this could be to do with AI overviews and the 'crocodile effect' but I am also thinking it could be the huge increase in referring domains that are being marked as Spam by Ahrefs (see image). In May 2026, I had 150 and in August 2026, I have 580 referring domains, most of which are marked as Spam.

Not sure what to do!

do not freak out if you see the spam notification from Ahref alone. check first that there is no google search console manual action or missing queries; only then disavow the links.

Crazy Monkey · Monday at 10:10 AM

Investigate the traffic drop before blaming the spam links. Compare Search Console queries, pages, rankings, and impressions year over year. Then review the new referring domains, recent algorithm changes, and lost keywords.

thaaz · Monday at 5:56 PM

I wouldn’t upload a disavow file just because Ahrefs suddenly labels a lot of domains as spam.

First split the loss into impressions, average position and CTR. If positions stayed similar but clicks dropped, the backlinks probably aren’t the first place to look. Also compare branded and non-branded queries and check whether the backlink spike actually lines up with the date and pages that lost traffic.

50% reduction in organic traffic, 4x increase in referring domains (most are SPAM) - help!

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