Facebook traffic has dropped by 90%

I was in doubt whether or not to make this post, this is more of an open conversation with some questions that go through my head, to see if I can understand my problem.

I have some news / entertainment / viral content websites, I write the article, posted on the facebok, I get traffic that I monetize with adsense and taboola.

Since 14 August 2020, my facebook traffic has dropped by 90% (more or less), I have no penalties, nor any kind of warning. Traffic has not decreased gradually, it literally dropped from one day to the next.
The only exception to this decrease in traffic was on 30, 31 August and 1, 2 September, when traffic returned to normal, then decreased again on September 3 and never went up again.

The first part of the year was one of the best years since I started (Jan 2014).

Is there anyone here at BHW who has experienced such a large decrease in traffic coming from facebook recently? I see that my rivals have much less likes and shares than in the past.

While looking for answers online I found this statement (from 2017)
"Facebook is cutting down on junky sites with trashy ads.
A rendering provided by Facebook provided hypothetical examples of ads that would be penalized by today’s change. Many of them resemble the “Around the Web” advertisements that are the bailiwick of companies like Taboola or Outbrain. "

Is this true? is there anyone here who experienced this on their own websites? If so what did you do, do you remove the widget? and the traffic returned to normal? how long after removing the widget?

Could this decrease in traffic be related to the layout changes that facebook is making?

Or with the USA elections? (whenever there are elections the traffic coming from facebook falls, but never fell so much).

If anyone has any ideas on this subject that want to share, I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

Thanks

Hi it depends what you was doing with your page it shows like you could have a reach ban which you would not see on your end but its showing on fb end. best thing to do is stop all posts and post once a day for 14 day on the 15th day the reach ban should be removed. if you are posting links then you are going to have lots of issues trying to restore the reach you had before hope that helps

Thanks englishmel

the strange thing is that this happens with all my 6 pages, and they all work differently.

And I look at my rivals and they are all in "free fall", with the exception of two, the only difference that these two have is not having the GDPR / TCF v2.0 EU Cookie Laws active, but I don't see what that this could influence facebook.

GateCrasher said:

Thanks englishmel

the strange thing is that this happens with all my 6 pages, and they all work differently.

And I look at my rivals and they are all in "free fall", with the exception of two, the only difference that these two have is not having the GDPR / TCF v2.0 EU Cookie Laws active, but I don't see what that this could influence facebook.

Click to expand...

what type of pages do you run and what are you posting ?

2 are news/entertainment/viral content with external links and 1 meme a day photo internal (like buzzfeed, 9gag, etc)

2 are from a mix of curiosities (external links) and memes (internal photo)

the remaining 2 are memes only (internal photos)

the six pages were created during 2014, and have always been working at full power (less, of course, the usual facebook cuts year after year)

GateCrasher said:

2 are news/entertainment/viral content with external links and 1 meme a day photo internal (like buzzfeed, 9gag, etc)

2 are from a mix of curiosities (external links) and memes (internal photo)

the remaining 2 are memes only (internal photos)

the six pages were created during 2014, and have always been working at full power (less, of course, the usual facebook cuts year after year)

Click to expand...

yea its a mess at the moment i just hope its a bug us our views are rock bottom at the moment and am seeing the same on a lot of other pages who post just videos like i do

You can use creative posts to drive traffic.

Luca0101 said:

You can use creative posts to drive traffic.

Click to expand...

any ideas?

GateCrasher said:

any ideas?

Click to expand...

maybe recently trending news items or using the engagement type titles - LIKE if you ......

sometimes the things you post are not very interesting, not enough for them to be interested, they find a better alternative, or sometimes the page will cut out the less interactive posts.