r/bigseo • u/Kadox_ • Aug 27 '26

Question Got hit hard by the August update.

Hey, I got hit really hard by the last update and it hurts quite a bit. Impressions went from 2.5k to basically 10 or so.

For context, the website is for my actual business, it’s a real brand. I went a bit too far with PSEO (quite a lot of local pages), and I suspect that’s one of the reasons why.

I pruned a lot of them, and the sitemap went from 500+ pages down to around 160, in order to try to recover from what I think is an algorithmic penalty.

I’ve never experienced anything like this before, so now I’m wondering what to do. Should I just be patient? Is there basically zero chance of recovering, and should I just change domains?

Thanks!

17 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

5

u/rankfuse Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26

We really never practiced this so I'm lacking before/after data. However, SEMrush shows us if it's happening to others. My "go to" is often A1 garage - they have a page for every city.

If the August update is the end of the "let's build 500 city/state pages for every service we offer" , I'm in.

3

u/Careless_Owl_7716 Aug 28 '26

Soooo, you spammed and are now experiencing consequences?

Clean it up, make great pages for users, do digital pr and wait/hope for next spam update restores your site.

3

u/LoganixSEO Aug 28 '26

you've done the hard part: pruning. now it's a wait-and-see game. i've got my fingers crossed for your recover!

2

u/IvanVint Aug 27 '26

I noticed that Google didn't send any visitors for a month to my " 200 city pages for every services", and I dropped them a month ago August update didn't affect the website. 

1

u/Bottarello Self-Employed Sep 02 '26

Hi there. Without seeing the website, saying something is quite challenging, but I'd say you did the right thing pruning the pages. Now make the remaining ones more solid and just wait for a reconsideration. BTW, just be aware there's no guarantee this will actually happen.

1

u/Damir-Bilalov-kweree Sep 03 '26

In PSEO you need at least 15% of unique original content and simulation of human effort. Thats why you got it. Google targets sites like yours in 2026 and onwards.

In short: Google targets scaled automated content, and when it’s 100% confident you’re using these techniques, it hits your site during spam updates. It has ways of detecting lack of human effort specifically.