Some facts from a different branch: Video gaming sector news sites (one with gaming in general, two others specialized in mmo gaming and gaming hardware with tipps - ought to be "authorities" but Google on 1st August decided they are not)
- Huge drop in news traffic (30-50%),
- Drops are connected with the video carousel change mid june (the vid carousel on top, news carousel below: deadly for news sites)
- Video carousel results not always matching the query
- No active link building (PBN... what's that? We are naive stupid white hats)
- Articles we update regularly rose in traffic (top ten lists for games or hardware, release lists, product comparisons, product tests)
- We publish each day the same amount of news but our visibility in newsbox dropped (AMP as well) - it's not a freshness thing. It's authority.
- During the first three days of the update the news box showed news older than 20 hours and ignored newer ones.