Significant drop in story views

Its difficult to help this without the website (and i’m not from support team), but you can check if the stories its valid, because some plugins/updates can directly influence this. Like Wp-Rocket, etc.

You can test the stories here:

https://search.google.com/test/amp

And i recommend to read this:

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-discover-and-traffic/430658/

And this:

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-discover-traffic-loss/426998/#close

Google Discover traffic has dropped to my site as well, but people’s interest is changing every time, every day, and this reflects in Discover content. I recovered some traffic in change posts and create another content.

@abelslp Thanks for your topic. It is not unusual to see spikes and declines in traffic as content being featured on Google Discover can change, and Google Search is constantly improving its algorithms, which can affect ranking.

Please note that questions about search rankings and traffic are generally better suited for Google Search Central, as they go a bit beyond our support offering for the Web Stories WordPress plugin.

We can help you check if there are any issues with your Story if you’d like to share a Story URL.

@luckynasan here are a few stories:

https://www.studentloanplanner.com/web-stories/the-inequality-of-student-loan-forgiveness-in-2022/
https://www.studentloanplanner.com/web-stories/americans-support-student-loan-relief-story/
https://www.studentloanplanner.com/web-stories/biden-student-loan-pause-uncertainty-story/

Any insight would be appreciated.

@rodrigoflausino thanks for sharing those links. Mind expanding on why Wp-rocket may impact GWS? Our site is https://www.studentloanplanner.com/ and we use Wp-rocket.

So far stories are valid using https://search.google.com/test/amp.

@abelslp Thanks. From what I can see all of the stories you shared here are valid Web Stories (according to https://search.google.com/test/amp) and the Rich Results test was good as well, so there aren’t any technical issue in the plugin or anything blocking you from traffic.

Linking to or embedding stories from other places on your sites and following the recommendations from the pre-publish checklist is a good way to ensure your users will find your stories.

You can also check out these resources for SEO information and advice, but Google Search Help Community will be able to assist you more.

@abelslp

Mind expanding on why Wp-rocket may impact GWS?

AMP validation errors can occur when you are using a plugin that is minifying your site’s JavaScript. That plugin has the ability to minify JavaScript files and we’ve had conflicts with it in the past. Disabling options to Minify JavaScript files resolves the error. There is also a “Combine Google Fonts” feature in WP Rocket that adds custom JavaScript to pages, which is not allowed in Web Stories so disabling that feature completely or at least for all /web-stories/ URLs resolves validation errors as well.

However, these are non-issues for you at the moment because your Stories passed the AMP validation tests as you’ve mentioned.

@abelslp We’ll mark this topic as resolved since we haven’t received a response. If you have any additional questions or need further support feel free to open a new support topic. Thanks for reaching out.