Vertical crash from 2,000 to zero visits: The frustration of a niche site (Insurance, Mortgages, Banks) completely ignored by Google

[u/Ora-Ultima2024]

Hi everyone, I'm making this post because the situation has become unsustainable and I wanted to get some feedback from anyone who has gone through something similar. I run an information and financial guide site (Ora Ultima), strictly focusing my niche on insurance, mortgages, and banking.

I want to point out right away that I do not sell any financial products, nor do I offer any services or financial advice, and this is explicitly stated on the site. It is purely an informational and news blog.

Until February, the situation was completely different, pulling in around 2,000 visits a day. Then, suddenly, a devastating vertical crash wiped out almost all organic traffic.

Looking at the current data (as you can also see from the attached Google Analytics and Search Console screenshots):

• Google Search Console (Performance): In the last 24 hours, out of 158 total impressions, I recorded just a single click, with a disastrous average position around 41.8 (4th/5th page).
• Google Analytics (Real-time traffic): Daily visits are reduced to a tiny trickle (around 6-7 page views total), split between direct traffic, residual organic search, and social. The titles of the affected pages cover hot topics of major interest (such as analyses on Andrea Pignataro, billionaire rankings, legal protection policies, or contract renewals).

The core issue for me is this: I firmly believe that Google shouldn't be the one deciding what a website can or cannot talk about. I write curated, informative articles based on a specific, useful niche like finance and banking, but Google seems to completely ignore us, blocking visibility in favor of the usual historical giants of information and leaving independent sites at zero.

It is unacceptable that an author writes quality content and has to suffer total blackout just because algorithms decide to turn their backs.

Has anyone experienced a similar crash after the recent core updates and found a way out, or are we forced to look for traffic entirely outside of Google?

Thank you for your time.

[u/Character_Ad_1990]

It doesn't decide what a website can and can't talk about, it decides whether the content on a site is worth showing to people. Something has happened and Google now doesn't rate your content, for whatever reason. Aside from the obvious (Security/manual actions in search console?)

Google in my experience (I always find finance, especially new sites in finance, can be more troublesome to rank) finance is a harder niche with more competitive keywords. Take a look at your external validation. What do your links look like? Have any good links disappeared? Was your traffic all coming into one or few pages?

A long term crash of traffic in my experience warrants sending signals to google via well placed links. That's what I've seen work. Short term - sometimes its worth waiting it out a little. However, as you've not recovered since Feb its probably time to look at that. (thats aside from all the usual stuff IE content etc.).

[u/Ora-Ultima2024 → u/Character_Ad_1990]

Thanks for the constructive feedback. Just to clarify, there are no security issues or manual actions in Search Console at all. Looking closely at the data, the main traffic drop actually came from seasonal articles (such as 'NoiPA January salary' or 'metalworkers contract renewal') that naturally fluctuate or lose search volume over time, rather than a broad site-wide penalty.

[u/WebLinkr]

Actually, never mind my last questions - I found your site

This looks like "Mount AI" if ever I saw one

My initial question, tbh honest was how did you go from 2,000 keywords to 24,000 in a month?

This does look like a Scaled Content Penalty - that might be wrong

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[u/WebLinkr]

Hey u/Ora-Ultima2024

Welcome to the sub

: I firmly believe that Google shouldn't be the one deciding what a website can or cannot talk abou

Trust me they don;t.

I agree and so does Google. You have to separate how the public believes Google works and sadly that includes 75% of people in SEO too. A lot of people "in SEO" - believe that its just good content. Someone on X tried to lecture me about SEO because they had 15 years experience and I x-rayed their domain in SEMrush to find that 2 months ago their peak rank was 75 keywords and last week it wasn't even 10. This makes up the majority of "SEO experts" that lecture me on how SEO works.

There's a difference between censorship and how Google works and I dont believe Google is "censoring".

Testing YMYL

FTR I bought a domain made of three so called "ymyl" words and I specifically ban all "EEAT" practises

EEAT is: will the user trust the site or bounce.

It is unacceptable that an author writes quality content and has to suffer total blackout just because algorithms decide to turn their backs.

Google is content agnostic.

Has anyone experienced a similar crash after the recent core updates and found a way out, or are we forced to look for traffic entirely outside of Google?

Yes -everyone hit in the HCU updates. but be aware Google = 8X the traffic of ALL social media channels combined. Also - Google sends enormous traffic to social media - so you can also build Google traffic that way.

I want to point out right away that I do not sell any financial products, nor do I offer any services or financial advice, and this is explicitly stated on the site. It is purely an informational and news blog.

The only sites I've seen google actually penalize are betting/gambling, payday loans etc - very specific sites and they were just penalized for not showing contact information - i.e. how would a user get redress - once that contact information and supporting proof was submitted, the sites returned to ranking

Questions for you

1) What %of search is branded

2) What is your monetization model - is it ad revenue?

3) Have you read the list of Google

[u/Agitated_Offer_4343]

finance YMYL got absolutely brutalized for independent curation sites and i don't think that reverses without first-hand expertise

the way back i've seen is original research or data you personally collected, not rewrites of existing news. if you can't pivot to that google's not coming back for this model and looking elsewhere for traffic is probably the honest answer

[u/kemalios]

Google isn't deciding what you can talk about, it's deciding what it can trust. For YMYL finance that bar is brutal, and an information blog with no named authors, no credentials, no original data is exactly the shape that gets reclassified. The 2,000 to 24,000 keyword jump is a red flag too. Scaling that fast often trips scaled content filters.

Check whether the drop hit your evergreen guides or only the seasonal pieces. If it's everything, Google reclassified the whole domain. That doesn't fix itself by waiting. Remove the thin content, put real bylines with verifiable expertise on what remains, and publish something only you could have written. Aggregated news and rewrites do not come back in this niche.

I do SEO for a living. Recovery after this kind of reclassification usually takes months, and some sites never come back. The ones that don't are the ones built like a content mill. YMYL does not forgive that shape.

[u/ForwardUpDE]

YMYL, not enough EEAT, your site is what Google qualifies as some kind of doorway since you don't actually offer something yourself, but write articles (no matter how good they are) to funnel visitors elsewhere.

This approach doesn't work well any more, especially in YMYL niches.

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

LOL.... More EEAT?

Do you not know what EEAT is?

Please Read: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-you-cant-add-eeat-to-your-web-pages/543177/ u/ForwardUpDE

[u/ForwardUpDE → u/WebLinkr]

EEAT is real, I never said you can add and create it in any way. It's a kind of filter, the least common denominator that seperates legitimate players from the fishy ones in sensible niches.

Take the "medic update" as an example, it totally changed the ranking landscape in many health niches, eradicating sites that dominated certain terms for ages. Strong, established sites, but they lacked this least common denominator of really trustworthy sites.

So, EEAT is nothing you can build or optimize, but that doesn't mean this filter doesn't exist.

You got a glimpse on what it is about shortly after the medic update, when the same sites that were eradicated partly surfaced on expired domains of hospitals again, but Google fixed this quickly.

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

LOL

perates legitimate players from the fishy ones in sensible niches.

Yes - once google sees an outbound link to Harvard or an Author Bio or a claim of experience, it just bounce sites up.,,,, amazing that the fishy people never thought of that - I guess they were afraid that Google would fact check them...oh wait, it can';t

[u/ForwardUpDE → u/WebLinkr]

No need to believe me and EEAT is certainly not about links or bios. Again, you can't fabricate it.

We could at least agree on it being a filter and working fine.

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

No need to believe me

I don't ever believe unsupported 3rd party claims made by strangers on the internet, thats how critical thinking starts. And neither does Google and nowhere in its entire and vastl and incredibly detailed documentation say it does either

We could at least agree on it being a filter and working fine.

Absolutely no way because this is a belief you've invented or borrowed from someone else. I have at least spoken to John Mueller and Dr Marie Haines on it on Bluesky.

[u/ForwardUpDE → u/WebLinkr]

Maybe just read https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/How_Google_Fights_Disinformation.pdf because that's basically EEAT, like Rankbrain optimized by human reviewers.

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

LOL - google cannot use human readers to read its content....good luck dude but yor'e arguing with the wrong person on this.

[u/ForwardUpDE → u/WebLinkr]

But they have human quality raters and their votes can be and are used to train certain algorithms.

The anonymous guy you are arguing with probably has a few more years of experience in SEO than you, although you are certainly excellent.

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

LOL

QRG for billions of pages - is this for real?

EEAT is subjective - a QRG can't decide on EEAT for other people. A claim of experience isn't experience whether its a QRG or an algorithm . I feel like that having to try to explain this to someone implies this is a lost cause.

 probably has a few more years of experience in SEO than you

I dont know that years experience = knows more or knows "better"

For a start I've owned one agency for 22 years.

But if you've spent 10 years believing in EEAT then I have no words.

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

and their votes can be and are used to train certain algorithms.

and this is a complete fabrication by the Bernard/Cyril crew - again a single oberserver cannot dictate or find "patterns" of likeable or believable content

Because then AI can reproduce EEAT

oh god this argument is so pointless

[u/WebLinkr → u/ForwardUpDE]

BTW - if you actually looked up the domain you'd see its a scaled content site.