If you’ve opened your Google Search Console or your WordPress analytics dashboard recently and were shocket to see your traffic drop, you’re not alone. Since May 2026, Google has been rolling out another major core update, and this time, bloggers, affiliate marketers, and review sites are the hardest hit.
A quick look at Search Console Help forums tells the same story. People are reporting near-zero traffic with no clear explanation. This post from BTech on April 20, 2026 sums up what many site owners are experiencing:
BTech’s post on Search Console Help, April 2026 is one of many site owners reporting a sudden, unexplained drop in traffic.
But the issue isn’t new either. I first noticed changes on my own site back in December 2025. Here’s what my data shows since then:
- Clicks per day dropped by over 80%, down to 0–2 clicks by late May 2026
- Daily impressions fell 60–65%, down to 1,000 impressions
- Overall site visitors dropped 33.5% in the last 28 days alone
But specific posts took an even harder hit:
- My Pallyy 2025 review dropped 100% in clicks
- My Starbucks CEO leadership case study dropped 75%
- My “Posting Zero” Gen Z social media post dropped 32%
- Even my own homepage lost 100% of its clicks for the period, which is really annoying
So I went digging to understand what’s actually happening, and more importantly, what you can do about it if you’re affected too. Here’s what I found, and why it’s really not a reason to panic.
What Is E-E-A-T?
Before we get into the update, let’s quickly cover the basics.
E-E-A-T is a framework Google uses to assess the quality of content. It stands for:
- Experience: The creator has relevant real-life experience with the topic
- Expertise: The creator has genuine knowledge and skills in their subject area
- Authoritativeness: The author is recognised as a go-to, reputable source in their niche
- Trustworthiness: The content is honest, reliable, and uses accurate data
At the heart of E-E-A-T is trustworthiness. Google considers this the single most important factor of the four. The goal of this framework is simple: Google wants to make sure it delivers the best possible answers for searchers and protects users from low-quality, misleading, or AI-generated slop that adds no real value.
What Changed in the Google Core Update (May 2026)?
Google has been quietly reworking its E-E-A-T framework since December 2025, with a string of smaller updates. The May 2026 update is the biggest wave yet, and it’s still rolling out.
According to Google’s own Search Status Dashboard, the update went active on 21 May 2026 and is expected to take 2+ weeks to fully complete, with ranking as the impacted product. So it’s normal to see some issued with your stats while this is loading.
This core update was completed as of 2nd June 2026, and appears to focus on two main things:
1. Review articles and posts without genuine personal experience
If a review or recommendation post was written by someone who didn’t actually use the product, for example, posts that summarise what other sites say, or reviews generated with AI tools, these posts are being downranked.
But it can also happen with older posts which have outdated information that does not reflect the current product description. I think this is what I saw with my Pallyy 2025 review, which dropped 100% in clicks in the last 28 days. This post was written a year ago. And my mistake was that I did not update it with new information.
2. Aggregated lists and comparison posts without hands-on testing
“Best X tools” or “X vs Y” posts where the author clearly hasn’t tried the tools themselves are also getting a hit. These posts have been a popular format for years, and I’ve written so many of them for client blogs in the past, but right now, Google is less likely to rank them.
You can still write listicles but you need to try each tool yourself and make sure you use your own experience when you describe them.
3. Personal experience posts are trending up (the good news)
I’ve also noticed the silver lining. My post “How to Recover a Disabled Instagram Account,” written back in 2023, jumped 700% in clicks in the last 28 days. That’s a four-year-old post suddenly exploding in new traffic and it’s not a coincidence.
In that post, I narrated my own struggle with getting my Instagram account blocked twice in the course of two weeks, and how I managed to get it back. It’s raw, personal, and it documents a real emotional experience.
That’s exactly the kind of content Google is now actively rewarding. Human-experience-first, with the raw emotional reality included. If you have older posts like that sitting quietly on your site, check on them, they may be quietly climbing right now.
Why Is Google Doing This Core Update?
Google likes to focus on the user’s experience first. So if you’re searching “best social media scheduler for freelancers,” you want a recommendation from someone who has actually managed three clients and tried four different tools. Not a recycled list of the same apps that have been on every “top 10” post since 2021.
Google’s priority is shifting firmly toward rewarding posts that focus on real human experience over polished, SEO-optimised content that’s thin on substance. The recent update is essentially a quality filter: it rewards creators who are genuinely the experts in their subject, and penalises those who are just copying, summarizing, and passing along information they found elsewhere.
Here’s What I’m Seeing Now:
Let me show you exactly what this looks like in practice on my own site, over the last 28 days.
My Google Site Kit traffic overview
- 155 visitors, down 33.5% on the previous period
- Organic Search makes up 34.6% of traffic, with Direct at 54.5%
Search traffic breakdown:
- Impressions dropped 15.8% to 28K, while clicks are actually up 4.7% to 45
- The content that is ranking is resonating
Search Console Data
Here’s what the longer-term trend looks like in Google Search Console. I was able to pull data for the last 3 months (March – May) showing the decline started well before May and has been accelerating:
- Daily clicks peaked at 10–11 in early March and have dropped over 80% since
- Impressions followed the same downward trajectory
Overall traffic (last 28 days):
- All visitors: 155 (down 33.5%)
- Total impressions: 28,000 (down 15.8%)
- Total clicks: 45 (up 4.7%)
- Unique visitors from search: 54 (up 1.9%)
The mixed signals here are actually really telling. Impressions are down, meaning Google is showing my site to fewer people overall. But clicks are slightly up, which suggests the content that is ranking is actually resonating with the people who see it. Quality > quantity.
Now look at which specific posts are moving, and in which direction:
Posts trending down (clicks lost)
These are mostly older reviews and general posts with limited personal experience (like the Starbucks CEO story).
Posts trending up (clicks gained)
These are all based on my direct personal experience: my own Instagram recovery process, hands-on 2026 tool reviews, even a personal recipe post.
See the pattern?
The posts going up are all based on direct personal experience, like my own process of recovering an Instagram account, my current hands-on reviews of tools I’m actively using, and a recipe I actually make at home.
The posts going down are broader, more general, or were written without that same first-person depth.
What Should You Do Going Forward?
The good news: if you’re already creating content from genuine experience, you’re in a strong position. Here are the practices that will matter most going forward.
1. Try the tools and products yourself before writing about them. If you’re writing a review of a social media scheduler, sign up, use it for at least a few weeks, and write from that experience. Your readers, and Google, can tell the difference.
2. Include your own screenshots. Nothing shows authenticity like real, unpolished screenshots from your own account. When I include my actual dashboard or a real error message I encountered, it shows Google that I was genuinely there.
3. Write in your own voice. Avoid the temptation to clean up your writing so much that it sounds like every other post on the internet. Your unique quirks, your opinions, your specific situation, that’s what makes content valuable and trustworthy.
4. Don’t copy or paraphrase other posts. Summarising what five other sites already said gives readers no new information. If you don’t have original insight to add, it’s worth asking whether you should even write the post at all.
5. Update old posts with your real experience. If you have older reviews that were written without hands-on testing, consider revisiting them. Add your own experience, update the screenshots, and remove anything that was just filler content. Think of how testing that tool or product made you feel.
Is Google Killing Small Bloggers?
I’ll be honest. The latest Google review process feels like is collateral-damage for small bloggers, affiliates, and reviewers like you and me. The posts being penalised aren’t always those that were inaccurate or not personally tested. I’ve used my own experience and taken screenshots along the way when testing tools like Buffer and Pallyy for several years. Yet the algorithm still hit me with lower traffic (100% drop) during this transition period.
The problem seems to be that Google has paused traffic across the board while it figures out who’s actually reliable and trustworthy, and small creators are caught in the crossfire.
The good news? If you’ve been doing the work properly, that should work in your favour once the dust settles.
Fingers crossed it happens soon.
The Bigger Picture
I can tell you from my experience that Google core updates always feel scary in the short term.
Your traffic drops, and it’s causing a lot of panic: Should you write more content? Hire an SEO professional? Delete your old content? But Google’s direction has been consistent for several years: they want to reward content written by real people, for real people, based on real experiences.
The May 2026 update isn’t the end. It’s Google getting better at recognising the difference between a trusted authority in a niche and someone who just used AI to create a post. The best response is to make sure you and your content fall clearly in the first bucket.
It’s not too late to get started creating good quality content.
Studio Scribis is a content writing studio for SaaS and tech brands. If you need help creating content that actually reflects your experience and expertise, get in touch.
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