Anyone else notice a traffic drop around June 28th 2016?

[OptiBacUK]

Hey guys,

i know there is a lot of chatter about a potential google update on / around June 28th... well, one of the sites I manage was hit pretty bad. I have attached an image showing what our ranking looked like before and after the unconfirmed update.

As you will see, we plummeted that day and have not yet recovered.

Has anyone else experienced drops? I'm trying to identify potential causes. I've started an SEO audit and so far I have identified 1 big fish and a few niggly bits.

Big Fish: non-www version of site had redirect rule overwritten by CloudFlare page rules and is using a 302 redirect instead of a 301. Now could this be the cause?

Niggly bits: technical SEO issues and optimisations like having unique meta titles etc.

If you have noticed drops or think you can shed some light on my situation that will help me then I would love to hear from you

Thanks

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[seoman10]

I have noticed a fair bit of fluctuation over the past few months, but especially weeks.

At a guess, I would say is connected to Penguin 4.0 (Real-time), You could have been one of Google's guinea pigs.

A few experts think they could have been an update to Possum late June or early September, But I wouldn't imagine that would cause a major difference.

I would also do a back link audit to make sure everything is in order.

[OptiBacUK]

Thanks Seoman10,

I was exploring the fact that it could be Panda because a lot of research-like pages dominated the top positions of the SERPs post-our rankings drop. We also have a lot of thin content pages from 2008 or so when blogging wasn't really our thing and I wasn't sure if they could be hurting us.

I think you may be on to something here. Will add backlinks to my focus.

[Dr-Pete]

There was noticeable algorithmic activity in early June and again around June 27th (right in your timeline). No updates were confirmed, but Glenn Gabe did some analysis around a "Panda-like" update:

http://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/june-2016-google-algorithm-update/

Glenn tracks a set of sites hit by previous penalties (including Panda and Penguin), and while he, like all of us, is forced to speculate, is data is generally pretty solid, IMO.