Yes, I’ve noticed traffic drops across a few niche sites as well — particularly those relying on aged backlinks or aggressive anchor text strategies. While AI Overviews may not be directly responsible, it seems the June/July core update has shifted weight toward backlink quality and topical relevance even more than before.
Some observations from my end:
- Parasite SEO pages with weak backlink foundations are taking hits.
- PBN links and low-engagement guest posts seem to have lost power.
- Niche edits from outdated or irrelevant content are performing worse.
- Sites with naturally earned backlinks (e.g., through branded mentions, editorial links) are staying more stable.
It feels like Google is now putting more weight on
link context and freshness, not just DR or ******** status.
Looking forward to hearing what others have seen too — happy to compare notes as your investigation progresses.