Said It Here

Massive drop in organic App Store discovery

Google recently launched AI overviews and is no longer sending traffic to external websites. Because fewer visitors are reaching these other sources, there are fewer people clicking the links that bring traffic to your app. This creates a sudden, massive decline in overall organic discovery.

Overview
People affected2 accounts across 2 forums
Workarounds found2 items attempted
Community agreement3 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Check Google Search Console for the plugin page's impressions and clicks to see if the issue is with wp.org impressions or listing click-through rate.
    Did this help you?
  2. 2
    Ensure the plugin's 'tested up to' WordPress version is current so potential users aren't scared off.
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In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Wordpress1 person · November 2026

“yes, same here. But it's not just from wp.org, I have less traffic from other sources too, it's since Google launched AI overviews, so Google doesn't send traffic to them, and so there are fewer visitors to click on those links and come to my site... the web seems to be dying”source ↗

leoleoloso · r/Wordpress · 2 upvotes
r/shopify1 person · October 2026

“Has anyone else experienced a massive drop in organic App Store discovery over the last 30–40 days?”source ↗

DiscoverMyBusiness · r/shopify · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised