# Hello,The issue of declining traffic from Google Search and Discover is a common problem for many technology websites. It seems the problem isn’t unique to the original poster, with other technology magazine owners reporting similar drops in traffic, particularly after Google’s March 2024 core update. This update seems to have significantly impacted traffic for websites specializing in electronics, design, coding, and other technical topics. The decline in traffic has been drastic for some, resulting in a loss of over 90% of Google traffic. This suggests that Google is making significant changes to its algorithms, which may be unfavorable to certain types of content.I am part of one of the largest technology magazines in my country, we are among the TOP 10 in the field. Recently, however, our numbers have been slowly declining. My team and I work hard every day, looking for new ways to engage readers and trying to write quality articles. Unfortunately, Google stopped favoring us about two years ago. Maybe it’s related to Core Updates, but I don’t want to put up with it.
We’re not bad, we’re definitely not going broke. Google Adsense still brings us good money and we also have paid collaborations. We were much better off before 2022, and now we have to work really hard to support ourselves and other fellow editors, cover the costs of hosting, web development, and other things. Our organic traffic dropped by about half before 2022 and has been flat ever since, even though we’re really struggling.
Example: The Galaxy S23 Ultra review was one of the best on the internet in our language, we published it first and it had over 60,000 views. The Galaxy S24 Ultra review that came out among the first has barely 6,000 views and we’re around 20th in the SERP, although the review is again of high quality. Google prefers competitors’ first impressions over our review, even if the search query contains the word “review”.
We have a fast and responsive website with a long tradition, founded in 2010. We have ads from Google Ads on the website, but they are not excessive compared to the competition. We even turned off ads on some sites, but to no avail.
We would like to continue to write about mobile technology, AI, computers and other topics, but Google may have stopped accepting us as a technology magazine, because we often write about topics that are read more (for example, Discounts, cheap products, sometimes even topics that completely unrelated to us like for example smart robotic lawnmowers lol which are a great read for us), and we use more clickbait headlines. Previously, various topics such as tutorials, tips and tricks were popular, but Google stopped showing them in the SERP.
Our traffic is now 70% from Google Discover, which is not sustainable in the long term, and even that is starting to slowly decline. We used to be in the TOP 3 in our country, now we are more like the bottom ten. I see the same trend for most technology magazines according to data from Similarweb, but two of them are growing. One of them makes low-quality content with extremely clickbait headlines and PR articles that are downright false, but they get almost double the traffic of us.
It’s frustrating how slowly we’re falling down. We keep the attendance, but it costs us a lot more effort and people. We want to grow, just as the competition grows, because we have the editorial skills to do so. Does anyone have a tech magazine too? Or any helpful advice we might find useful? I don’t want to give up, the work fulfills us and still earns something, but we would like to move to the top and improve our attendance. This is our third year of dealing with this problem and it is extremely frustrating and exhausting. Now we are doing a big redesign of the website, which is technically a little outdated, but not fundamentally compared to the competition.
Thanks a lot!
The reliance on Google Discover for a large portion of traffic (70%) is a cause for concern, as Discover traffic is known to fluctuate. Furthermore, the success of competitors using low-quality content and clickbait headlines, despite Google’s stated preference for high-quality content, highlights the unpredictability of Google’s algorithms.
The issue of declining traffic is compounded by the fact that Google Adsense remains a significant source of revenue for these websites. This dependence on Google for both traffic and income creates a risky situation. While websites are attempting to diversify their traffic sources, including Bing and Yahoo, these platforms don’t seem to be able to fully compensate for the loss of Google traffic.
The advice from other website owners suggests that the only hope for recovery may be a future Google core update. However, there is no guarantee that such an update will address the concerns of these websites, or even that Google will reverse its current course.