Unpopular opinion: most "failed" sites failed at month four, not at the algorithm update

Every post-mortem I read blames an update. I have bought 23 sites in two years and looked at the content calendars behind them.

The pattern is almost always the same: heavy publishing for three months, a slow month, then a two-month gap, then one desperate burst, then the owner calls it dead and blames Google. The traffic chart and the publishing chart are the same chart with a lag.

I am not saying updates do not hurt. I am saying most of the sites I buy cheap were already abandoned.

This is uncomfortably accurate. The sites I am proudest of are just the ones I did not get bored of.

Saving this. Month four is apparently the thing I should be scared of, not the thing I am scared of.

Disagree slightly — I have had genuinely well-maintained sites halved overnight. But as a base rate you are right.

Same in ecom. The stores that die are the ones where nobody shot new creative for six weeks.

I tried something close to this last year and it fell over at scale. Curious whether yours holds.

Bookmarking. Thanks for taking the time to actually explain it.