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@brodieseo I’m happy for your client that there was a recovery. 📈
Google would tell you today (as they will always tell you) that today’s algo is better than yesterday’s—they are “always improving”.
So if today’s algo is better than yesterday’s, that implies that yesterday was worse than today. If today (the latest data point in your graph) is more or less the same as it was some time ago (about spring of 2020, from what I see in your graph), it is in some sense a reversion. (I realize that under the hood much will have changed with the algo over that stretch, but the net result seems to be equivalent in traffic.)
Now if your site is actually substantially better now than it was when it was “punished” (for roughly two years, it looks like), then fine.
But I’ve seen plenty of sites get punished by an algo update, but then—without any material change to the website—recover completely months down the road. So the same website was punished for months by what Google would now acknowledge was an inferior algorithm (since today’s is better). 📉📈
So in those cases, what infuriates me is the (sometimes MASSIVE) damage to the business during the period of time Google’s algo was admittedly “worse” than it is today, and, from the net effect, worse than it was two years ago. Traffic crushed, revenue lost, jobs eliminated, projects abandoned, business shuttered by an "evolution" in the algo that was worse than it was and, supposedly worse than what we have today. 📉🤯
OK, screenshot proof of the change. Household name eCommerce brand in Australia. Complete recovery in rankings, back to #1 for most important queries. Was in a meeting at their head office when this hit – we were all in shock. This feels deserved based on the work we've put in.