Measured: How Fast You Can Lose Your Visibility, and What Google Just Gave You to See It

Three things landed in the past two weeks. Two are updates from Google that give small businesses new ways to see how they show up online. The third is a real case study of what happens when a business loses visibility fast and cannot get it back.

In this episode of Measured, we break down what happened and what to actually do about it.

Two quick updates from Google. On September 10, Google brought back Business Profile post view counts for the first time in three and a half years. View counts now appear on individual posts and go back 18 months. Separately, Google is testing a new AI Contribution feature in Search Console with limited publishers, which would eventually show businesses what percentage of their traffic came from AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The main story. On September 8, 2026, Search Engine Journal reported that a UK news publisher lost 98% of visibility for trending Google News queries after moving from a .co.uk domain to a .com domain. According to NewzDash, the site's visibility dropped from 1% to 2% down to 0.02% within two weeks. Four months later, the site still shows only isolated appearances. Standard SEO tools tracking evergreen keywords showed a 60% to 70% drop over the same period.

Google associates your domain with years of authority, backlinks, and trust signals. Changing domains means Google has to figure out that the new site is you, and that transfer is not automatic. It relies on 301 redirects, sitemap updates, and preserving the trust signals Google uses to evaluate whether a site is authoritative.

In this episode:The Google Business Profile post view counts updateGoogle's new AI Contribution feature in Search ConsoleThe UK publisher case study and what actually happenedWhy domain moves are one of the highest-risk technical decisions your business can makeThe pre-launch, during-launch, and post-launch actions that protect your visibility

Customer question: Should I have a chatbot on my website?

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