I have two blogs that used to do amazingly and now they don't do anything in terms of traffic or earnings.

I am wondering if something happened in the last 5 or 6 years that could have caused this. Everything was looking up and increasing on my sites and then out of nowhere, they tanked!

Google started rolling out major algorithm updates around 2020-2021 which hit content sites hard. Then the Helpful Content Update in 2022 destroyed a lot of sites that were doing well before.

AI overviews and featured also snippets now steal clicks that used to go to blogs.

Check your Google Search Console and look at which queries tanked. That will tell you exactly what changed.

7 hours ago, Sara said:

Google started rolling out major algorithm updates around 2020-2021 which hit content sites hard. Then the Helpful Content Update in 2022 destroyed a lot of sites that were doing well before.

This. I know this was a factor for me. AI made everything a lot worse following these changes. I think they were making these changes to anticipate for AI but also because of everything happening in the world at the time. They were trying to safeguard for misinformation. It just ended up hurting so many of us.

I believe it was down to Google as mentioned. I have a feeling this:

On 6/18/2026 at 9:38 AM, xJamesQ said:

They were trying to safeguard for misinformation.

Is behind a lot of it. Every since 2021 (at the start of the year) I have seen so many people talk about their websites, shops, blogs, etc. losing upwards of 90% of their traffic.

Of course. But it isn't the only one or some sort of defining factor. You can rank well using just about any site format or software, even the free variations like Blogger. It just comes down to the content and the quality of the site really. Making sure it is optimized helps.

These days, I don't think the back end software even matters so much. There are so many platforms like WordPress now that allow you to build sites without coding experience. I am sure Google favors some of them over others but it is way down the list of priorities for the search engine.

On 8/2/2026 at 10:49 AM, dougchimes said:

Is behind a lot of it. Every since 2021 (at the start of the year) I have seen so many people talk about their websites, shops, blogs, etc. losing upwards of 90% of their traffic.

Likely just indirect consequences of changing things in the back end of the search engine. It sucks because most people still rely on them for traffic. Some do grow to a point where they have a loyal audience but most people don't.