Traffic Recovery After a Google 2024 HCU Update

+50%

Traffic recovered

+26

New top 10 rankings

Site Details

Solution

Results After 6 Weeks

+50%

Traffic recovery

+26

Top 10 rankings

Update – May 12, 2025 (20 weeks later): More than 3 months after the last update, the site is still growing. With a minimal amount of new AI-assisted content, the site has reached new daily click records – peaking at 58 clicks in a single day, up from the previous record of 46.

Pe scurt: Acest studiu de caz e scris pe data de 3 Ianuarie 2025. In urma stergerii si deindexarii a 73% de continut pe site – aproximativ 45 de pagini sterse dintr-un total de 61 – traficul a inceput sa creasca usor dar consistent. Nota: Singura modificare facuta a fost doar stergerea si deindexarea continutului pe site.

Summary

Written: January 3, 2025

After deleting and deindexing 73% of the site’s content – approximately 45 pages out of 61 – traffic began recovering slowly but consistently.

Note: The only change made was deleting and deindexing content. Nothing else was modified.

Detailed Process

Sacredself.co is a personal site started in late 2022 as an affiliate marketing experiment.

Work and other projects slowed progress – and as Google increasingly penalizes thin affiliate content, I decided to turn it into a dedicated SEO testing ground.

1. Content publishing phase (Jan 24 – Feb 5, 2023)

I published 8 new articles using advanced keyword research, written partially with ChatGPT. By March 2024, those articles were producing results – peaking at 46 clicks in a single day.

2. First traffic drop

Traffic began declining slightly after the Google Spam Update on June 20, 2024, with the sharpest drop occurring after the Google August Core Update on August 15, 2024.

3. Traffic hits the floor

Between November 1-5, organic traffic dropped to just 2 clicks per day.

4. Content audit and mass deletion

Shortly after the Google Core Update on November 11, 2024, I ran a full SEO audit on the site. On November 17, I deleted 73% of the content – leaving 16 pages live out of 61. Despite a further Google Core Update on December 12, 2024, traffic continued to grow steadily and was unaffected by this latest update.

Conclusion

The hypothesis that removing low-traffic, low-quality content can benefit the stronger pages on a site appears to be confirmed.

A follow-up update was planned for the end of January to validate or challenge these results.

Andrei Turca

My name is Andrei and in 2014 I made my first money online through websites and SEO. I currently offer SEO services for Romanian and English-language websites. Learn more about my SEO approach on my YouTube channel with SEO tutorials. For more SEO education, check my SEO blog or my SEO case studies.