Jesus Mendez, the SEO Director at MailOnline, which operators DailyMail.co.uk, has admitted publicly that the site took a massive hit by the June 2019 Google core update which began rolling out June 3rd. He said the site "lost 50% of daily traffic" because of this Google update.
It is very rare for a publishing site that large to admit they were hit by a Google update - extremely rare to see a post about it in a public forum. But the transparency is clear and honest, which I do love. It launched in 2003, and according to Wikipedia it is/was "the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world, with over 11.34m visitors daily in August 2014." Heck, I even wrote how smart they were when they hid an easter egg in their robots.txt file to hire a savvy SEO for their publication.
But now, the site lost 50% of its traffic, with an additional 90% drop in their Google Discover traffic - which can hurt big time for a publication that size.
Jesus Mendez wrote in as Google Webmaster Help thread "The day after the broad core algorithm update (June 3rd) we saw a massive drop in Search traffic from Google (lost 50% of daily traffic). This was a drop over the course of 24-hours and we have not made any changes to the site. Further, we saw our Discover traffic drop by 90% and has not improved. This is across all verticals, devices, AMP and Non-AMP. "
Here is a screen shot of the full post (click to enlarge):
There are no responses to this post - but wowza. We know this update can be big for some sites but the DailyMail really felt it!
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Update: The Press Gazette confirmed with The Mall Online that Jesus Mendez did post in the Google forums.
Update On April 21, 2021: Fast forward years later and now The Daily Mail is suing Google over this traffic drop, claiming this drop was due to them not placing enough Google Ads on their site - although, placing too many ads are probably the reason for the drop. This drop was mentioned on page 47 of the lawsuit, thanks @AlexiMostrous (click to enlarge image) and it seems the traffic returned with the September 2019 core update:
