Sudden decline in Web Story Traffic

Everyone I know is seeing this problem, too. Great traffic in the beginning and now nothing. People have given up and stopped publishing.
The additional problem I’m having is my search is seeing my web stories and not my content! When I search on “induction” I get my story on induction stovetops and not https://www.thismamacooks.com/2020/01/induction-cooktop-stove.html. It’s so frustrating! Makes me wonder if I should delete the web story pointing to this post and do a redirect.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Anne-Marie Nichols. Reason: typos

Sorry for the duplicate post.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Anne-Marie Nichols.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Anne-Marie Nichols.

Thanks for reaching out with your topic. 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.

That being said, it is not unusual to see spikes and declines in traffic, for example when content is being featured on Google Discover. At the same time, Google Search is constantly improving its algorithms, which can affect ranking. Linking to / 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.

If you’re not sure whether a change in traffic is caused by a change to your site, use Search Console’s various tools to see if your content is properly crawled and indexed. The help resources at Google Search Central can further help debug cases like this.

@hemant3005 Since starting your topic you seem to have disabled this plugin, and our support is limited to the Web Stories plugin.

@amnichols Both your story and the blog post show in the search results. Could you clarify what issue you are experiencing here?

@luckynasan thanks for your reply. I don’t see https://www.thismamacooks.com/2020/01/induction-cooktop-stove.html in my website’s search (only the Google web story), which is supposedly based on Google’s search. I’ll take it up with my tech people.
I have noticed that the only Google web stories that are showing up in my Google app are ones with video. I had only made stories with still photos as I’m worried about video taking up too much space and my host charging me extra for something that may not bring me traffic.
It’s too much of a gamble to spend time and money on. Too bad because initially it showed so much promise.

@luckynasan thanks for your reply.

I had written to Google Search Central & they could not identify the exact reason, I had performed all the checks possible whether it’s indexing or GA is tracking, etc. All were good except the rich snippet, Our rich snippet was bad since rank math creates this issue with the plugin.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/105570822?hl=en

I only wished to know if it’s due to a normal occurrence or some issue with the plugin or GA. I have installed another plugin today & trying to experiment with creating stories on it & checking the response

@amnichols Perhaps you can try changing your search terms because as previously mentioned both your story and blog post shows in the search results. While there may be many factors as to why stories get featured on Discover, following the pre-published checklist or best practices for creating Web Stories can be helpful as well.

@hemant3005 Unfortunately, without the plugin activated we can’t assist with troubleshooting your story’s rich results. We’ll be happy to check on your story if you encounter any issues with only the Web Stories plugin activated.

@luckynasan really appreciate you spending some time & helping us with these issues. Thank you.

After the last message, I have decided to reactivate & use the same plugin. I created 2 more stories yesterday:

https://www.shethepeople.tv/web-stories/tara-sutaria-arjun-kapoor/
https://www.shethepeople.tv/web-stories/virat-kohli-father/

They are on google & showing a valid AMP page, Its not eligible on https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

@hemant3005 Thanks for sharing these details. I ran a test on rich results and I’m seeing that several AMP scripts are not successfully loading, which is likely the issue here: https://jmp.sh/vAyMs9j+/Screen+Shot+2021-04-15+at+9.20.11+AM.png.

To help us troubleshoot further, can you please share your Site Health information privately via this form? Thank you!

Hi Bethany, I have updated the information to the google form, please check and let me know. Thank you

@hemant3005 Thanks so much! We’ll do some testing on our end and I’ll get back to you here as soon as I have more info.

@hemant3005 I reviewed the Rich Results issue with our team and this should not be affecting your traffic. The “Page Partially Loaded” notice that I noted often comes from third-party services such as analytics tracking tools or ads, or in your case the AMP resources, with the scripts hosted on the AMP CDN. You’ll find out more here.

However, we did notice that running your stories through the Rich Results test sometimes results in a redirection error for your Google Analytics script: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results?view=fetch-info&id=ss-OJuJVRHYDbPn1N01F3Q. This could cause the Analytics issues that you’re seeing, as Analytics isn’t able to successfully track visits.

These issues can be caused by optimization plugins and/or CDNs. I can see that your site is using Cloudflare and Smush –?could you try temporarily deactivating one or both and monitor your real time Analytics report to ensure that traffic is being counted as expected for your Web Stories?

If you’re still having issues, I’d recommend contacting Google Analytics support as this does seem that this could be a broader Analytics issue that would affecting more than just your Web Stories.

Sorry we’re not able to directly pinpoint the issue here, but I hope this helps!

Hi Bethany,

Thank you for checking this, I will speak to my developer & try the steps mentioned by you.