I changed settings in search console and my rankings dropped significantly?
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hi reader,
3 weeks ago i changed international targeting setting in search console to USA and 3 weeks. ago i was ranking pretty fine in the US. now i am out of top 100.
is it search console or other reason?
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I did the same with my website and facing the same issue.
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It is possible that this happened by changing international targeting. Also, check if Google had any algorithm updates at that time as well.
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The international targeting setting is deceptively powerful and I have seen it wreak havoc.
I wouldn't expect it to cause problems with US rankings if you change it to be more focused on US so if you made other changes around the same time it is probably a good idea to look into what you can test/roll back.
The good news is when I have seen this setting cause problems I've seen the problems reverse pretty quickly after switching the setting back so if you do determine that there wasn't anything else around the same time then it could be worth testing switching that back.
Hope that helps!
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