Four traffic drops, checked from the outside

What happened

The owner asked in Google’s help forum how the redesign would affect SEO, and dates it to early February 2026. Estimated visits held through February and March (448 and 441, a little above the same months of 2025). In April they fell to 204. Google’s March 2026 spam update rolled out from March 24 to March 25, and its core update from March 27 to April 8.

Seasonality, ruled out

Heating is seasonal, so we compared each month with the same month a year earlier. April 2026 was 57% below April 2025. May to July ran 38–43% below the year before. That’s far outside the dip the same months show in 2025, so seasonality doesn’t explain it.

Google updates in the window

• March 2026 spam update, March 24–25, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice
• March 2026 core update, March 27 – April 8, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice

Old-URL check

Of 30 pages archived before the redesign, 16 now return a 404 error and 14 resolve to working pages. None redirect to the homepage.

What the owner could do

Redirect the 16 broken URLs, and any others like them, to their matching new pages. That part is Recoverable, and it’s the first move whatever Google did. Google’s part gets no grade from outside: only Search Console can show whether the lost clicks sat on the broken URLs or spread across pages that didn’t change, and that split is what an Autopsy makes.

Since then

From August, estimated visits climbed back. By October they were 14% below October 2025. We can’t see from outside what changed.

What we couldn’t see from outside

• Whether the lost clicks sit on the 16 broken URLs or spread across pages that didn’t change.
• How many old URLs are broken across the whole site. We sampled 30.
• Whether the new pages carry the content the old ones ranked for.
• Why visits recovered from August.

What happened

The owner’s thread dates the move to about six months before it was posted, which puts it around late March 2026. By the owner’s account, Bing traffic came back within weeks; Google traffic is still far below where it was.

From the outside, the old domain held between 1,195 and 1,226 estimated visits a month from November 2025 to April 2026, fell to 60 in May and 5 in June, and has shown 0 since July. The new domain shows almost nothing in the same data: 2 visits in June and in July, 33 in August and in September, and 17 in October. The owner reports Google traffic far below where it was, which is more than these estimates show, so read the new-domain figures as a floor.

Google updates in the window

• May 2026 core update, May 21 – June 2, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice

It may account for part of the loss. Outside data can’t separate it from the move.

Old-URL check

All 30 sampled old URLs redirect to pages on the new domain. None land on its homepage, and none are broken.

What the owner could do

Not much more is visible on the site side: all 30 sampled old URLs redirect to pages on the new domain, and by the owner’s account Bing has followed them. What may be left is Google moving the old domain’s standing to the new one, which takes time: across 892 domain migrations, organic traffic took 523 days on average to return to its old level, and 17% hadn’t after 1,000 days (Dan Taylor, founder of 10 Spurs, Search Engine Journal, January 8, 2025). Odds: Waits on Google.

What we couldn’t see from outside

• Whether each old URL lands on its matching new page, or on a different page within the new domain.
• Whether the move was registered in Search Console.
• Which pages and queries lost the clicks on Google.
• How much of the remaining loss belongs to the May core update.

What happened

Estimated visits rose from 62,343 in September 2025 to 82,834 in December. Google’s December 2025 core update rolled out from December 11 to December 29. In January, visits fell to 36,885, then to 7,262 in February and 1,803 in March. From April to October they stayed between 4,683 and 6,386.

Google updates in the window

• December 2025 core update, December 11–29, 2025. Calendar entry · Google’s notice

Old-URL check

Of 30 sampled old URLs, 29 resolve to working pages and one redirects to the homepage. None are broken. We found no domain change.

What the owner could do

With nothing broken on the site side, there’s no redirect fix to make. Whether traffic returns depends on Google reassessing the site, and Google’s own guidance says that can mean waiting until a later core update. Odds: Waits on Google.

We did not assess the site’s content, and nothing here is a judgment about its medical information.

What we couldn’t see from outside

• Which pages and queries lost the clicks.
• Whether specific pages, rather than the whole site, took the loss.
• Any platform change our outside checks can’t detect.

What happened

Estimated visits had grown from 1,692 in September 2025 to 14,849 in March 2026. Google’s March 2026 core update rolled out from March 27 to April 8, and in April visits fell to 8,374. They fell to 6,079 in June, after the June 2026 spam update, to 1,852 in August, after the August 2026 spam update, then to 288 in September and 58 in October as the September 2026 spam update rolled out. The owner attributes the drop to a spam update.

Google updates in the window

• March 2026 spam update, March 24–25, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice
• March 2026 core update, March 27 – April 8, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice
• June 2026 spam update, June 24–26, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice
• August 2026 spam update, August 18–21, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice
• September 2026 spam update, September 24 – October 8, 2026. Calendar entry · Google’s notice

The March 2026 spam update landed just before the core update. Google’s notices are linked from each calendar entry.

Old-URL check

All 30 sampled old URLs are unchanged and resolve to working pages. We found no broken or redirected old URLs.

What the owner could do

A spam update acts on sites that break Google’s spam policies. If the site meets those policies, the grade is Waits on Google. If it doesn’t, no grade means much until it does. We did not assess the site’s content.

What we couldn’t see from outside

• Whether the site meets Google’s spam policies.
• Whether a manual action was applied. That shows only in Search Console.
• Which pages and queries lost the clicks.