SLAP!! Google moved me from page 1 to page 9. What the...?

[IMLegacy]

OK, so I've heard of the Google slap before. I like to think that I'm pretty good at getting my sites to rank quickly, and keep them there for the long haul. Now I'm starting to think that Google just likes to pick on some websites for no apparent reason.

As an experiment, I started a jokes website. It's a very specific joke niche. I entered the first 100 jokes, and created a joke-submission form where people can enter their own jokes. I also created a five-star rating system for visitors to vote for their favorites.

I launched the site on August 4, 2008. According to Google, I'm competing with about 8 million other pages for my main keyword phrase.

I did all of the "standard" SEO and link-building techniques. All of the meta tags are appropriate. Keywords density is good. Sitemap is there. About us. Contact us. It's all there.

Within about 2 weeks, the site was in the top 10 for my main keyword phrase. Within about 6 weeks, I was in the top 3 or 4 for several keyword phrases.

For monetization, I was using adsense and CPA banner ads. The traffic climbed to nearly 1200 unique daily visitors by November. Nearly 2000 jokes had been submitted, so the content was staying fresh every day.

Then, on December 11, SLAP! My traffic dropped drastically. December 10 had almost 1400 unique visitors. December 11 had only 229. December 12... 75 visitors. Yesterday... 12 visitors. I went from position 3 or 4 to page 9!

What the #%$!?

I'm stumped. I have numerous other sites that I've built with the same techniques and they're all doing great.

Did anyone else notice a change around that time? Could it be the CPA ads (2 banners per page)? Could it be the adsense ads (2 blocks per page)?

Are there tools to tell me if I have a quality score problem.

Any thoughts?

[IMLegacy]

And what really makes me angry is the sites that are getting ranked above me SUCK! How can another sites blog post from 2 years ago with one of my keyword phrases rank higher than my entire website dedicated to that keyword phrase?

I've been reading some other threads that are saying, "Yep. It happens. You rank high for a few months then fade away. But with proper link building techniques, blah, blah blah... you work your way back." That makes sense to me, but it's never happened to any of my other sites. I'm really curious to find out why THIS site was slapped. Strange... very strange...

[dburk]

Hi IMLegacy,

First let me say that you've got your Google metaphors mixed up. The "Google Slap" refers to having your AdWords minimum bids jacked way up due to poor quality score. Based on your post I assume you are not having a problem with your AdWords bids.

The right Google metaphor could be the "Sandbox Effect", but again based on you post I would say it's something more than that.

If you haven't already done so you should eliminate as many technical problems as possible by going to Google Webmaster Tools and look for any crawling issues under diagnostics. You can also view diagnostic issues in your AdSense account that may point to certain issues.

Since much of your content is user generated you should definitely look for problematic content. There are certain keywords that may be common in jokes that will get negative points for your site.

Again, based on your post, you point to traffic levels at as few as 12 visitors, this indicates a problem with the quality of your backlinks. When your site has a sufficient number of quality backlinks, it will be able to sustain significant traffic without any coming from search engines. If you have a large number of backlinks that send you little or no traffic, you have a backlink quality issue.

Go out and build backlinks that send you lots of targeted traffic, not only will the search engines love these kind of links, they make your site impervious to the inevitable "Google Dance".

[IMLegacy]

Originally Posted by dburk

First let me say that you've got your Google metaphors mixed up. The "Google Slap" refers to having your AdWords minimum bids jacked way up due to poor quality score. Based on your post I assume you are not having a problem with your AdWords bids.

Nope, no Adwords campaigns for this site. Thanks for clarifying the "slap" term.

Originally Posted by dburk

The right Google metaphor could be the "Sandbox Effect", but again based on you post I would say it's something more than that.

Right, I'm not in the Sandbox. Although it feels like I'm standing right beside it with some bully grabbing onto my leg.

Originally Posted by dburk

If you haven't already done so you should eliminate as many technical problems as possible by going to Google Webmaster Tools and look for any crawling issues under diagnostics. You can also view diagnostic issues in your AdSense account that may point to certain issues.

Diagnostically, I'm looking good. Webmaster Tools says my site is indexed. There is only one url which is being reported as troublesome, but that's because my robots.txt file is telling google to not index it. It's the script that handles the five-star voting.

Originally Posted by dburk

Since much of your content is user generated you should definitely look for problematic content. There are certain keywords that may be common in jokes that will get negative points for your site.

Good point. Although I filter every joke for obscenities, there are still some which Google might consider a little too "adult."

Originally Posted by dburk

Again, based on your post, you point to traffic levels at as few as 12 visitors, this indicates a problem with the quality of your backlinks. When your site has a sufficient number of quality backlinks, it will be able to sustain significant traffic without any coming from search engines. If you have a large number of backlinks that send you little or no traffic, you have a backlink quality issue.

Go out and build backlinks that send you lots of targeted traffic, not only will the search engines love these kind of links, they make your site impervious to the inevitable "Google Dance".

I currently have 40-50 backlinks. I would say that the large majority of those are from quality sources, although many of them are from blog comments on posts that are related to the niche.

But, very good advice. Thanks for your input.

Anyone else have any thoughts about why I've been demoted in the Google realm?

[dburk]

Hi IMLegacy,

One more note on backlink quality: Many folks have a mistaken notion of what gives a backlink "quality". You'll often see folks foolishly refer to the Pagerank of a backlink as a measure of quality. Pagerank is a quantitative measurement not a qualitative measurement.

Backlink quality should be measured by the amount of relevant traffic it will generate. This is something that is so easy to measure yet you rarely hear of anyone doing so.

When you build quality backlinks your only traffic problems will be on the city streets.

[Evita]

Originally Posted by dburk

When you build quality backlinks your only traffic problems will be on the city streets.

Your'e good...... ;-)

[aboutalhah]

I just made a post recently about this.

My affiliate marketing site dropped from page 1 to page 3.

I decided that I was going to change the page since I didn't have a good ranking anymore. And guess what?

I'm on Google top 5 now.

All I did was updating my home page, and getting a couple of links towards it.

Try this, there is nothing to lose.

Franck

[aboutalhah]

I just made a post recently about this.

My affiliate marketing site dropped from page 1 to page 3.

I decided that I was going to change the page since I didn't have a good ranking anymore. And guess what?

I'm on Google top 5 now.

All I did was updating my home page, and getting a couple of links towards it.

Try this, there is nothing to lose.

Franck

[IMLegacy]

Well, I got a couple more backlinks through some website directories and... What do you know? Right back up to page 1 again. Page 7 yesterday, page 1 today. What a rollercoaster!

[captivereef]

My 4 year old 2000 page mortgage site does this all the time. I recently just had traffic come back after losing it around june. At one point i was getting 1000 per day then down to 300 then 100 now back up to 350-400??

[dburk]

Originally Posted by IMLegacy

Well, I got a couple more backlinks through some website directories and... What do you know? Right back up to page 1 again. Page 7 yesterday, page 1 today. What a rollercoaster!

Ah... This is what we call the "Google Dance". In the past it used to happen to all websites at the same time. Now they roll them out gradually spreading out the implementation to one data center at a time.

It's quite common to see your ranking drop for a few days to a few weeks and then come roaring back, often higher than before.

If you go out and get lots of backlinks from sites that send you targeted traffic you will become less reliant on search engine traffic and when the Google Dance comes you will still have a reliable core of traffic to sustain you.

[honestbizpro]

You can always take a shortcut and put the top 5 sites in a backlink tracking software and follow them right to the top. Literally. (of course maintaining current content pertinent to your niche on your site)