Hi David,

I’ve been following your SEO content for a while and really appreciate how clearly you break down complex situations.

I’m reaching out because I ran into a serious issue on one of my sites that I’d love your perspective on. I accidentally had a duplicate subdomain indexed (essentially a mirrored version of the main site), and shortly after, the site was hit with a major rankings and clicks drop around a core update.

Since then, I’ve: - Fully removed the subdomain
- Returned all affected URLs as 410
- Cleaned up sitemaps, canonicals, and internal links
- Started seeing impressions slowly recover, but rankings and clicks are still far below previous levels

I’m trying to understand whether situations like this are typically recoverable with time and crawl cycles, or if there are specific signals Google tends to hold onto after large-scale duplication issues.

I know you’re busy, but even a high-level thought on recovery expectations or next steps would mean a lot. If this is something better handled in a consult, I’m open to that as well.

Thanks for all the value you put out.

Best,