Ch. 4: The Update Wiped 60%, and I Did the Opposite of Panic

Ch. 4: The Update Wiped 60%, and I Did the Opposite of Panic

My recipe site was doing $3,100/mo on 71,000 sessions. A March core update took it to $1,240 in nine days. I almost listed it on a marketplace that week — I had the listing drafted.

Instead I pulled GSC data and found the carnage was concentrated: 14 thin "roundup" posts ("23 easy dinners") lost 80% of their clicks. My original tested recipes barely moved. The site looked like a content farm because of those roundups.

I deleted 11 roundups, 301'd the survivors into real recipes, and added a clear "tested in my kitchen" note plus process photos to my top 30 pages.

Next core update, four months later: traffic recovered to 58,000 and revenue to $2,700. Never got back to peak. Didn't need to.

Lesson banked: core updates usually punish a slice of your site, not all of it — find the slice and cut it before you sell.