Search Traffic Drops Before It Improves?

[wattssw]

I'm working on a site with tons of great, useful content....the owners of the site implemented a new site layout and design (complete overhaul) and they were lacking basics such as meta descriptions, 301 redirects, and, shockingly, they had the same Title tag for every single page on a site with thousands of unique how-to articles.

Unsurprisingly their traffic dropped by about 300%.

They generate most of their traffic from people learning how to build stairs, how to install crown molding, and other related matters.

Beginning last Thursday I've been performing basic on-site SEO, things like having unique titles for each page and similar tasks. The week from Thursday when I began until yesterday (Wednesday), Google traffic dropped  -29.73% -  17,715 vs 25,210

I believe this is a normal part of the "Google Shuffle" -- does anyone have a Matt Cutts link or similar proof that this is a normal part of the process?

[deltasystems]

This has always been common for me over the past five years. It's definitely nothing new. I've never seen anyone from Google acknowledge this phenomenon or explain why it happens.

It's likely something technical with the algorithm that won't get explained. Perhaps the next time there is a QA session with Cutts one of us can ask him for a simple explanation