15% Drop in Traffic. Anyone have theories about the most recent update?

[nicole.healthline]

Analyzing our traffic, looks like we were hit site wide, with some article pages that don't have great engagement seeing more damage than others. We've been talking to other sites, and sites that have never seen any penalties and do everything right have also seen about 15-20% drop in traffic.

The sites we know that weren't affected are brands (sites you would recognize by name).

The only conclusion I can draw from everything (looking at mozcast metrics 'big 10' is that branded websites saw a boost.

Does anyone else have any theories about what this most recent update was about?

[Bryan_Loconto]

Google has been lowering the value of low quality links such as non relavent guest blogging, because they dont want people to game the system. If you want to rank in Google you need to give the users what they want (value).

Google has not officially announced an update, however they have been making changes, and they make about 500 changes a year. If you go to Googles webmaster forum you can see that many people are experiencing loss in rankings.

You can check the weather here: mozcast.com

Also, I would recommend checking out SEObythesea by Barry Schwarts.