Deleting competitor's wp config file to decrease their rankings?

I had a site that was doing great, ranking #1. Then I notice in the morning my ranking dropped, so I checked it out. My site just said "error establishing database connection"

I later found out wp config file had been cleared, causing this. So I just restored it and it's fixed.

I hadn't touched the site for a week thoigh. So somehow the file got deleted on its own, and I think it was down for about 12 hours, causing a ranking drop that I'm still suffering from. This is for 22k monthly search kw.

Have you ever had this happen where wp config cleared randomly? I changed all my passwords and disabled plug-ins. Worried it might be some type of tdchnique to tank rankings of competition

Not sure about this, but your ranking will be back in time

you wp might be at risk change password just encase .

Do you use a „free and cheese“ Theme on your Block or is your Password „secret“ or „password“. You could check date and user for last edit of file. There you will see whether it was changed from WP (code injection...) or from console hacked root...
Maybe you just got a wrong configured addon that tries to relocate the file (for security reasons) and fails to write a new one....