Site killed by a core update, only the homepage survives. What's going on and how do I fix it?

[seowen]

Looking for real advice here, because on paper I genuinely can't see what I'm doing wrong.

About the site:

It's an OnlyFans finder and discovery site on a brand new domain, registered December 2025 and launched late April 2026. OnlyFans has no real search, so we help people find creators by category, niche, and location. It is not a scraper or a thin directory. Every part of it is properly built:

• We run an accurate, maintained model database behind the whole thing. Each category page shows a unique set of creators generated from our own filtering and ranking logic, so no two category pages show the same grid.
• Every category page has 2,500 to 3,500 words of unique, hand-written editorial copy. Not spun, not templated with a swapped keyword. Real copy on creator types, pricing, and what to expect.
• Genuinely useful blog posts and location guides on top of that.
• Schema on everything. CollectionPage, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, Article, all valid.
• Internal linking is tight and deliberate, related categories and related posts wired across the whole site.
• Technically excellent. Core Web Vitals score 95+, proper canonicals, clean sitemap, no crawl errors.
• One DMCA strike ever, resolved the same day. No pattern.

Genuinely, the content and structure are stronger than most of the sites ranking above me. There are competitors with far thinner content, and some running scraped creator data, sitting above us in the results.

The big cleanup we already did:

We rewrote the entire site. We used to have over 100 doorway-style location pages, which we have now deleted and redirected into genuinely useful, relevant guides. On top of that we rewrote the content on every single page, making it far more editorial and much longer than before.

What I did on links:

Early on I bought a sitewide link with generic anchor text. I also did 5 niche-relevant guest posts, which were stronger, contextual links in relevant content, and got the site listed on a few other adult directories. That got me to DA 8. After the hit I disavowed the sitewide link and kept the guest posts.

What happened:

We only had a short period of promising growth after launch before it died. In that window, impressions were spread fairly evenly across the whole site, category pages, posts, and guides all getting picked up. Then the May 2026 core update hit and it collapsed. Our sitewide average position went from around 36 to around 64 more or less overnight.

Now basically only the homepage gets any meaningful impressions, and it mainly ranks for broad, blanket terms for the niche at an average position of 50 to 60. Every internal page has flatlined.

Important detail: this is not a deindex and not a manual action. Everything is still fully in Google's index, Manual Actions in Search Console is clean, so it is purely an algorithmic demotion. The whole site just ranks nowhere now.

What I have already tried:

Removed and redirected the doorway pages, disavowed the bad sitewide link, rewrote all the content, and requested reindexing and recrawl on every URL.

The ask:

What is actually going on here, and what would you do next? Is this a links and authority problem where I keep building real links and wait for the next core update, or is it something else I am not seeing? The doorway cleanup is done, the content is deep and unique, the tech is clean, and sites with less than us are outranking us, so I cannot work out what is still dragging the whole thing down.

Any advice genuinely appreciated. Not after a sales pitch, just trying to understand what is happening and what actually works to climb back.

[LucyVanAngel]

Honestly, if you're dealing with a new domain that got hit this hard, it’s usually less about technical perfection and more about trust. Google often puts new sites through a "sandbox" phase, and core updates are brutal if they decide your site lacks enough authority to back up all that content, even if it's well-written. If your competitors are ranking with "worse" stuff, it’s likely they either have a stronger backlink profile built over time or they aren't triggering the same quality signals that Google uses to demote newer sites. I’d stop stressing over the technicals since you've clearly checked those boxes and just focus on building genuine, slow-burn authority and brand signals instead of obsessing over site updates.

[plsureking]

We rewrote the entire site.

i think i found your problem XD

#

[TheSquealer]

The first thing you should do is change your username.

You do not seem to have any idea at all how search engines work and like most, made a list of oft-repeated buzzwords which you converted into an action plan... and then are baffled that its all going wrong.

But you bought "a link", so I am sure all will be fine in the end well established, well aged sites with infinitely more juice because "thin content" which has little to do with anything.

[Useless Warrior]

The first thing you should do is change your username.

It's Korean, dipshit.

[Marshal]

If you are looking for an experienced SEO running some of the biggest websites on the web, let me know.
I've been too busy lately, but feel free to hit me up on email: webmaster[at]seobackyard{dot}com