My Traffic Dropped Suddenly By 70%

[E. Corbo]

Overnight my traffic dropped by 70%, I have no idea why... I am pretty devastated here.

First I thought it was some kind of a technical problem, but now I see that my main Keywords that used to rank 1-3 in Google dropped way down.

What the hell happened?

Since 2007 I have a steady increase of traffic, a massive jump since January this year. I have unique articles and a big community that comments regularly (over 30 comments a day). Ihaven't changed a thing on the site lately.

I can't believe this.

What can I do?

Eddie

[Dellco]

Recently, yesterday, and today, Google did some shakeups to many SERP results. I have noticed many sites that were at #1-3 for a long time take a tumble, sometimes several pages back. An algo shift did happen.

The one thing that we cannot take for granted is that our sites will stay at their spots forever.

[App Developers]

yes, yesterday google made a shift. All you need to do is continue to work and get yourself back up to top rankings. good luck

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by E. Corbo

Overnight my traffic dropped by 70%, I have no idea why... I am pretty devastated here.

First I thought it was some kind of a technical problem, but now I see that my main Keywords that used to rank 1-3 in Google dropped way down.

What the hell happened?

Since 2007 I have a steady increase of traffic, a massive jump since January this year. I have unique articles and a big community that comments regularly (over 30 comments a day). Ihaven't changed a thing on the site lately.

I can't believe this.

What can I do?

Eddie

I've been working on an FAQ here for just this sort of event. Take a look. If nothing on the list sticks out as the reason, PM or post your site and I'd be happy to make a quick look over for problems.

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...exed-sunk.html

[JaySchmidt]

Read the Google Webmaster Blog. They explain that they just altered their ranking algorithm for people in your part of the world. They also explain how to check your sites for factors that indicate a lack of quality (and how to fix things). Good Luck.

[filano]

It also happens on my site. I do not understand it but I will continue to update this site to return to normal.

[garben2011]

I wondered what happened!

At least it works both ways, of course.

About 3/4 of my sites have seen an increase in traffic today. Many of the pages have jumped anywhere from 5 to 15 spots higher! A freaking huge amount when multiplied across so many pages.

Sorry to hear about your traffic loss and I hope you can gain them back!

Personally, these last updates Google has done have made a huge impact in increasing traffic to my sites so I definitely like their new algo! But I realize it sucks when you get hit in the opposite direction and lose most of your traffic. I have been through that before and eventually the traffic always comes back so it should be the same for you.

I try not to rely on Google organic traffic for the reason that it makes me feel pretty much at their mercy. But it certainly is awesome when it does happen. Just saying what Google gives Google can take away. And from what I have seen in the past 7 years that happens on a pretty steady basis. See if you can get some traffic flowing in from other sources besides relying completely on Google. I actually like to work at this pretending there are no search engines. So, I ask myself... hmm... now how do I get people to visit my sites? The answer of course is that we just focus on good ole fashioned marketing.

[markowe]

Hey, wait a few days before you hit the panic button. I had a site drop down to page 3 from page 1 for its main keyword, even though it had been stable for a couple of years!

Lo and behold it was back today as though nothing had happened. Weird, but it happens, especially if something has changed in the Matrix

[E. Corbo]

Thank you all for your replies.

It is really a shock, it's like my own and my family's fate solely depends on Google algorithm changes. As I wrote, the traffic grew over the last 4 years, it skyrocketed the last 6 months.

I had Keyword drops in the past and they all came back, but never something like this, like ALL of them dropped.

I really would like to know what I did wrong. I always considered my site a quality site with unique content, not much advertising, a growing community...

[ElectronPlumber]

Eddie, I took a look at your site. It's actually a great site! Well structured, unique content, tons of comments. There is absolutely nothing that jumps out at me as against the rules, you seem to be doing almost everything right.

Suggestions and possibilities:

1. You say you changed nothing on your site. Are you 100% sure? Think back. Did you change something like a month ago? Sometimes it takes that long for Google to catch up. Did you add a new area asking people for their email, removed some internal links, cleaned up a footer, anything that might have removed links? How about adding links? If you add a list of links, even internal ones to your homepage, every existing internal link is reduced in value. Added a new widget, anything?
2. Did you lose any old backlinks? I have some experience with this. My very first site I made on Wordpress.com for about a year before moving it to my own domain. I paid Wordpress.com $12 to redirect every page to my new site for a year, which includes redirecting any backlinks to that old Wordpress.com blog. The next year I decided to not bother paying the $12 again since I'd been on the new site for a year and all my traffic was at the new site. About three weeks later my Search Engine traffic dropped in half! Finally dawned on me that my site suddenly lost ALL it's nice powerful aged backlinks that were being redirected. I paid Wordpress.com their $12 and a week later all my traffic was back.
3. You don't have a ton of quality backlinks to your subpages that I could find in the Yahoo backlink report. For example, I went to SemRush.com and look at their report for your site, found one of your top ten keywords that it said used to be at position 5. When I look now it's at position 14 on the second page. I can see Google's latest update maybe whacking you for that, but not as bad as you seem to have been hit.

Personally, even if this isn't why you dropped, I think you have way too many links on your homepage. Seoquake added up 71 internal links and 31 external links on your homepage. It didn't look like you had many external links, but it might be counting that Twitter widget you have and all the links out there. Google does crawl JavaScript and they *might* be giving those Twitter widget links 30% of your homepage link juice.

Another ides to get some of your articles back in the rankings would be to thin out the internal links you have on your homepage. For example, that sitebar widget with your recent, popular and Eddies favs. You have 30 internal links there. Cut it in half or less and laser focus that link juice on those article that got you the most traffic from Google.

You have that Paging plugin too where it lists links for First, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Last, etc. I found when I added that to one of my sites, I lost search ranking. It adds 10 internal links off your homepage that point at pages that you tell Google not to even index! It's not that you're losing that PageRank, it's still flowing around your site. But you are taking 15%-20% of your best link juice off your home page and tossing it around your site willy nilly when you could be it could using it to focus on you best articles.

Do the above and get a bunch of new backlinks to the articles you used to be on page 1 for and I bet you come back better than you were before.

[NewBeing]

I've been reading over at Webmasterworld.com that Google has rolled out their Panda/Farmer update worldwide now.

There's a lot of unhappy webmasters there, so you may have been hit by this update.

[uHowToDo]

Don't panic. When it hit the US it took a bit for the algo to review/rank everything again. It is just like when you launch a new domain and start to build backlinks... when you start appearing on page 1 you will dip up and down until it locks your spot.

[markowe]

Yeah, check out this thread - Google PANDA rolls out WorldWide Google SEO News and Discussion forum at WebmasterWorld

There are plenty of others in the same boat. Seems people are panicking a bit prematurely though, I hope some of this is a temporary effect, like a Google Dance. Let's wait a week or two.

It's scary though, the number of people whose very livelihood depends on SEO and Google. I am definitely going to get away from that sort of dependency, it's just too risky.

[Katejon]

Many thanks, Electron Plumber for your detailed post.

[nakmuay7]

Be sure that your site isnt just doing the google dance first.

the new update has site doing the google dance a lot at the moment.

the same methods will still work but will require you to push more links to the links you have already built in order to have them indexed.

[alina albert]

after updating panda yesterday many sites dropped their traffic.

[Tim Wallace]

Anything has been changed? no changes on my site. If there are really change at google's algorithm, just waiting everything will be better.

[Katejon]

Yes we can all wait and go back to the drawing board but when 'poor' sites with next to 0 links and PR0 are above yours, you've been doing the 'right' things - and you are not a content farm, the top sites (which you know you can get to) are not affected, and you're now twice as far down the list as you once were......it is a nuisance to say the least!

[mrtaxiservice]

If its only for few day then avoid it. Otherwise analysis for new SEO teq. Recently Google change its algo

[E. Corbo]

@ElectronPlumber

Thank you very much for your detailed analysis, I really appreciate your time.

I've really made no significant changes that I remember, everything you see was already there a few years ago. No suddenly something is wrong?

I will work on these items you've suggested, thank you for that.

I've never experienced such a disaster since I started 4 years ago. Let's hope it's temporary...

But it really make me think about this Google dependency as some of you pointed out. My financial future cannot depend on this.

Hope I will survive this...

[Ishav Khan]

oh dear don't come to panic its google new updates done it only in usa so,usa related sites mostly affected by it.this update done in january 2011 thats called panda(farm) update

[dadamson]

Yeah it's the shift that Google did yesterday I would say.

I have found that sites with a lot of page rank backlinks stood their ground. I'd recommend you diversify your backlinking as much as possible and you will work your way back up there in no time.

[Katejon]

There are genuine causes for grief out there and reading some posts which google asks for, it is heartbreaking. I write good content always accepted by EZA - then it gets syndicated with a backlink -but I'm beginning to wonder if these types of links of have been downranked as these are seen as duplicate content (even though it is syndicated) and also placed on the kind of sites with ads that maybe G is trying to downrank.

Trouble is, the content originators are suffering and that's really not right.

[jonnyhardbaked]

So, Google updates are the reasons why you dropped. Though it is hard to say but, it is just a normal scenario.

[Tizzko]

14 of my sites were deindexed completely this morning. One of them was at #1 on google for my keyword and was making an average of $42 per day with adsense. Now it has been completely deindexed and is nowhere to be found as of 10AM this morning.

[chasnsx]

I wondered why I got a big surge in traffic Monday and yesterday. I had noticed that I finally made page 1 for one of my "good" keywords, but I thought Google was finally indexing all the backlinks I've been creating over the past three months.

I guess I am one of the folks who benefited from the latest algo change. I am near the top of page 2 for most of my other keywords where I used to be on page 3-5.

I just hope my traffic stays up.

[Tizzko]

Did anyone else get completely deindexed?

[meenukapoor]

the main reason for this is that you are work more on one keyword which is out off than also you on which you submission its PR is Low