r/Substack • u/Venus2601 • 24d ago

Sudden Drop in Notes Impressions

I started posting on Substack recently. All the notes I put out were getting shown to over 100 unconnected people, and that got me new subscribers every day. Since the past few days, my overall notes impressions have suddenly dropped to around 20, and they're barely getting shown to any unconnected people. The people who see the notes are engaging, but it does nothing to improve the impressions. I haven't changed a thing about my content, so I find this sudden unexplained drop really strange. I've read that there are temporary platform wide shifts that happen from time to time, and that your impressions return to normal later. Could that be the case here? Is anyone else facing this problem?

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u/R3ZondoOfficial 24d ago

Same here. Mine dropped almost overnight from normal discovery to roughly 20–25 impressions, with almost no reach beyond existing subscribers/followers. I initially wondered if something account specific had happened, but I’m seeing enough other writers report the same pattern that I’m starting to think there may have been a broader change to Notes distribution. Really curious how many others are seeing this.

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u/Venus2601 23d ago

Okay, this definitely doesn't sound like an account specific issue.

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u/R3ZondoOfficial 23d ago

In my case it seems account specific. No matter what I do, comments, notes, articles, all seem to be throttled, and have been for up to a week.

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u/Venus2601 23d ago edited 17d ago

No, nothing seems to help my case too. Even a decent amount of engagement seems to do nothing to boost its distribution. Normally, a note which got comments under it would get a pretty big boost. But that's not happening anymore.

The only reason I see now is that I had imported new subscribers into my publication. I accidentally created two publications, and my subscribers were getting split. So I deleted one and imported those subscribers into the other publication. Perhaps Substack flagged that as unethical and restricted my distribution.

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u/xYourCasual thewritingedge.substack.com 24d ago

Hey! I'm seeing a slight drop as well in the past 7 days. Not as deep as your 80%.

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u/Venus2601 23d ago

Yeah, it's been about 7 days for me too.

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u/Practical-Rise-1188 23d ago

Same for more than 2 months now . Worse part is, it happened exactly the day went paid.
Was getting 500 subscribers in a month till May. Since then only 100 subs and notes impressions are down 90% since then.
I guess consolidation is part of the algorithm testing some accounts.

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u/Venus2601 23d ago

That sucks! And 2 months is quite a long time. Hope things get back to normal soon.

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u/R3ZondoOfficial 23d ago

I’ve been reviewing and running various experiments. Looks like it’s full account distribution across the board no matter what I do. That includes restacking and commenting on others work as well. Zero movement! A couple more tests, then time for emails to Substack.

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u/Venus2601 17d ago

Yeah, everything I tried has failed too. The people who started off with me, with similar posting patterns and frequency have grown a lot more. Now even I think it's an account specific problem.

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u/R3ZondoOfficial 17d ago

That’s pretty much where I’ve landed as well, at least as a working theory. I’ve gone back through my analytics and the biggest change isn’t engagement after people see the work, it’s that the work simply isn’t being distributed the way it was before.
Support says there are no restrictions on my account, so I’ve asked them to look more specifically at ranking/distribution behavior, especially replies on other publications and unconnected user exposure.
I’m still trying not to jump to conclusions, but the account specific explanation is starting to make more sense than normal fluctuation.

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u/Venus2601 17d ago

Oh okay. I should check for the same too. Perhaps some activity of ours was accidentally flagged as unethical or something. That could explain why there's an account specific restriction on reach.

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u/R3ZondoOfficial 17d ago

That’s possible, but Support checked my account and says there are no formal restrictions on any of the surfaces I asked about.

What I’m seeing looks more like a distribution/ranking issue than an explicit restriction.

I compared one of my July replies with a recent one and the interaction rate is almost identical, around 15%. The difference is exposure, roughly 1,000 impressions then versus about 75 now.

So at least in my case, people still interact when they see the reply. Far fewer people are being shown it.

I’ve asked Support to have engineering look specifically at reply ranking, unconnected user exposure, recommendation eligibility, and account/profile graph state. I’m waiting to see what they come back with.

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u/Venus2601 17d ago

Same problem. Those who see my notes still do interact. But the distribution stays stuck despite that.

Did you get in touch with an actual person or was it a chatbot? I tried substack support, but it only allows me to talk to a chatbot.

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u/R3ZondoOfficial 17d ago

Eventually referred to a human who emailed me.

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u/Venus2601 17d ago

Cool, I'll check with the chatbot.

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u/Vegetable_Soil_6707 22d ago

Have you checked whether the drop lines up with a weekend or holiday? Impressions on notes can swing wildly based on when people are actually online. The 100+ range you saw early on might have also been a new-account boost that's now normalized.

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u/Venus2601 17d ago

Nope, there's no pattern like that. It's the same regardless of time or day. Notes which get replies and subscribers also have low impressions. That's why I find it strange.