How to Grow Blog Traffic When Google Sends Fewer Clicks
A finance blog fell from 800,000 readers a month to about 200 visits a day after a core update. Here's how to tell what broke, then build the channels an update can't touch.
A finance blog fell from 800,000 readers a month to about 200 visits a day after a core update. Here’s how to tell what broke, then build the channels an update can’t touch.
Where the data comes from: the studies and reports the post names (Ahrefs, Backlinko, Zyppy, Similarweb, Pew Research, beehiiv) and the r/Blogging threads it read, each row with the date the post gives.
- Medium post: How to Grow Blog Traffic When Google Sends Fewer Clicks
- RankControl, an AI SEO and AEO platform
- Google Sites page: The Two Kinds of Blog Traffic Drop
Numbers in the post
| Number | What the post says | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 800,000 readers a month to roughly 200 visits a day | “from about 800,000 readers a month to roughly 200 visits a day” | A finance blogger’s post in r/Blogging | “this year” (the post gives no month) |
| 58% | “Ahrefs looked at 300,000 keywords and found the top organic result gets a 58% lower click rate once an Overview shows up.” | Ahrefs | Not dated in the post |
| 260.7% in fourteen days | “Backlinko’s content relaunch, which reported a 260.7% traffic lift in fourteen days. That study is from 2016” | Backlinko | 2016 |
| 23 million internal links across 1,800 sites | “Cyrus Shepard’s Zyppy ran the numbers at scale: 23 million internal links across 1,800 sites.” | Zyppy (Cyrus Shepard) | Not dated in the post |
| about 2 clicks | “Pages with zero to four internal links got about 2 clicks from Google on average.” | Zyppy (Cyrus Shepard) | Not dated in the post |
| roughly four times | “Pages with 40 to 44 links got roughly four times that.” | Zyppy (Cyrus Shepard) | Not dated in the post |
| about 45 to 50 links | “The same study also saw traffic drop off again past about 45 to 50 links” | Zyppy (Cyrus Shepard) | Not dated in the post |
| 770.7 million and 117.4% | “Similarweb counted 770.7 million AI referral visits a month worldwide between June 2025 and May 2026, up 117.4% on the year before.” | Similarweb | June 2025 to May 2026 |
| at least doubled | “Every category it tracked at least doubled.” | Similarweb | June 2025 to May 2026 |
| 1% | “people clicked through to a cited source in just 1% of visits where an AI summary showed up” | Pew Research | July 22, 2025 (the date in the post’s link) |
| 8% | “where Pew saw people click a regular result in only 8% of visits” | Pew Research | July 22, 2025 (the date in the post’s link) |
| 15.6 billion | “beehiiv’s 2025 newsletter report covers 15.6 billion emails sent across its platform in 2024.” | beehiiv, 2025 State of Email Newsletters | emails sent in 2024, 2025 report |
| 37.67% | “It put the average open rate at 37.67%” | beehiiv, 2025 State of Email Newsletters | emails sent in 2024, 2025 report |
| 4.59% | “and the click rate at 4.59%” | beehiiv, 2025 State of Email Newsletters | emails sent in 2024, 2025 report |
| 23,000 | “One food blogger said it sent 23,000 outbound clicks the month before, all organic.” | Pinterest, per a food blogger in the blogger threads the post read | Not dated in the post |
| eleven months and 183 posts | “Another blogger, eleven months and 183 posts into a new site, said most of their traffic still came from Pinterest while Google hadn’t started ranking them at all.” | A blogger in the blogger threads the post read | Not dated in the post |
| two different bloggers | “In the threads we read for this piece, two different bloggers said the same small fix worked: a takeaways block plus a few FAQ-style answers, no other change.” | Blogger threads the post read | Not dated in the post |
| top twenty pages | “Open Search Console and compare clicks against average position for your top twenty pages.” | The post’s first check | Not dated in the post |
| ten best posts; five older posts | “Pick your ten best posts. For each, find five older posts on the same topic and link to them with a plain anchor” | The post’s internal-links step | Not dated in the post |
| three or four subreddits | “Pick three or four subreddits in your niche and show up every week” | The post’s Reddit step | Not dated in the post |
| One signup box; one inside your ten best posts; one email a week | “One signup box at the end of every post, one inside your ten best posts, one email a week with the new post and one thing you actually learned.” | The post’s newsletter step | Not dated in the post |
What this actually costs, side by side
| Channel | Hours a month | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refresh old posts | 6 to 10 hours | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post |
| Internal links | 3 to 5 hours | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post |
| AI referrals | 2 hours, mostly tracking | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post |
| Bing and Copilot | 4 hours once, then 1 | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post |
| Newsletter | 4 to 8 hours | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post |
| 4 to 6 hours | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post | |
| Add Pinterest and video and the whole plan | about 32 to 55 hours a month | The post’s rough number of hours a month on each channel | Not dated in the post |
- Reference: https://medium.com/@thesearchshift/how-to-grow-blog-traffic-when-google-sends-fewer-clicks-2ec15b16b46e
- Reference: https://rctrl.com
- Reference: https://sites.google.com/view/search-shift-notes/blog-traffic-fewer-clicks
- Reference: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/
- Reference: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/
- Reference: https://www.beehiiv.com/blog/2025-state-of-email-newsletters-by-beehiiv
- Reference: https://www.beehiiv.com/blog/2025-state-of-email-newsletters-by-beehiiv
- Reference: https://www.beehiiv.com/blog/2025-state-of-email-newsletters-by-beehiiv
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