Yeah, algorithm shifts can definitely hit sites like that, especially when your traffic pipeline is almost entirely organic search. A drop from 40-100 clicks down to 20-30 isn't a death knell though-gaming is a brutal space where content velocity is king, and updates tend to amplify that volatility.
What jumps out at me more is the year-long hiatus. Google, much like any algorithmic system (Amazon's A9 included), rewards consistent signals over time. When you go dark for that long, you lose trust momentum and the crawl budget starts to treat you like a ghost. The fact you've bounced back once before is a good sign-proves the site had genuine authority at some point.
Couple of things I'd check before hitting the panic button:
- Are your top-performing pages the ones taking the hit, or is the bleed sitewide?
- Did rankings slide on particular keyword clusters, or is it a blanket shift?
- Are bigger players now covering the same topics you used to own?
- How consistent has your publishing cadence been since you restarted?
May can also be weird for gaming sites. Some niches dip between major releases or seasonal events-could just be a lull rather than a structural collapse.
Honestly, if you're still pulling 20-50 clicks on some days, I'd treat this as noise, not a funeral. Keep posting steadily for another two or three months before making radical changes. A lot of smaller sites get shaken out temporarily during these sweeps and settle back once the dust clears.
