Anyone else seeing MASSIVE traffic drops lately?

[Marketing Fool]

Hey everyone.

During the first 4 days in January my adsense sites were bringing in an average of $133 a day off of about 16,000 page views (total) worth of traffic.

But the next 4 days of January have dropped to about $54 a day in earnings off of about 9,000 page views (total) worth of traffic.

It's understandable that traffic and earnings from adsense would drop off after the holiday season, but a 43% decrease in traffic and a 60% decrease in earnings seems excessive.

Is anyone else seeing similar drops? Could it be another Google algo change, or am I just unlucky? Or is it just seasonal, due to the end of the holidays?

[lutherlars]

no radical changes for me.

[tylerjaysen]

were you averaging the $133 a day prior to holidays? Or did you just notice a drop recently? My earnings for adsense have also dipped lately. Not sure why.

[IM Ash]

Why are you here?

[JSProjects]

Seems like it'd be the other way around. I'm finally on the up-swing after a fairly slow 2 1/2 weeks during Christmas, the New Year, and shortly after.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by tylerjaysen

were you averaging the $133 a day prior to holidays? Or did you just notice a drop recently? My earnings for adsense have also dipped lately. Not sure why.

I was averaging just below $133/day throughout December. So the drop has been JUST in the last 4 days.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by JSProjects

Seems like it'd be the other way around. I'm finally on the up-swing after a fairly slow 2 1/2 weeks during Christmas, the New Year, and shortly after.

Why would it seem like the other way around? People are buying like crazy before the holidays...after the holidays, buying drops (or even stops)...hence traffic drops... also advertisers have just spent heavily through the holidays and probably aren't as likely to spend nearly as much now that the holidays are over....just my thoughts.

[SuzanneH]

Originally Posted by Marketing Fool

Why would it seem like the other way around? People are buying like crazy before the holidays...after the holidays, buying drops (or even stops)...hence traffic drops... also advertisers have just spent heavily through the holidays and probably aren't as likely to spend nearly as much now that the holidays are over....just my thoughts.

It all depends on the niche. I'm in the weight loss niche and traffic drops in December and then soars in January.

Suzanne

[jr1228]

January started off really rough for me. It's starting to pick up finally... we'll see if it lasts. On another forum it seems like almost everyone is having an awful month so far.

[Valera]

The last 4 days have being really s$#ty for me as well and my sites are all in clickbank affiliate niches...

Seems like people are not really searching as much the last 4 days, maybe due to the weekends and what not, but my sales are still pretty crap today.

To put it in perspective, I took a dive of about 50% in sales last 4 days as well and all my sites are still ranking really well in google.

[Valera]

Posted in wrong thread... sorry

[troybh]

You do realize there was an algo change on about the time your page views dropped.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by Valera

The last 4 days have being really s$#ty for me as well and my sites are all in clickbank affiliate niches...

Seems like people are not really searching as much the last 4 days, maybe due to the weekends and what not, but my sales are still pretty crap today.

To put it in perspective, I took a dive of about 50% in sales last 4 days as well and all my sites are still ranking really well in google.

Glad to see it's not just me!

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by troybh

You do realize there was an algo change on about the time your page views dropped.

Nope, hadn't heard...I'm usually up on that stuff. Read some people talking about it at webmasterworld but it didn't sound very definitive...and they were talking more about right after x-mas... *shrugs* can you point me towards more info?

[owenlee]

I have some of my traffic drop too..maybe more work is need for the coming year...yeah....

[TBInternetMarketing]

My sites seem to be getting the same volume as usual. I also haven't seen too much changing in my rankings although one of my sites hit page one yesterday

[feliciayapsl]

It has remained the same for me

[OhSusanna]

Oddly enough, I have seen a gigantic drop in one of my PPV campaigns. This campaign has been old reliable for me.
Today it looks like things were on their way back up. Gotta stay up my friend!
2012 is going to be our year

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by OhSusanna

Gotta stay up my friend! 2012 is going to be our year

I'm sure you're right! I'm very optimistic!

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by bloggerd

Mine dropped as well over christmas period,but it is starting to pick up agin not quite back to what it was before but it's on the up agin..

I had a pretty solid Christmas season, and even did well right after Christmas and through the new year (which was really surprising to me, I figured all the x-mas shopping would dry up before x-mas and traffic would drop then). It wasn't till around the 5th of January that things started to drop for me...

[OmarNegron]

During the Christmas season and the day before Christmas it was ugly (which is normal) but after things have picked up. Haven't noticed anything unusual since.

-Omar

[GeorgR.]

Yes i am seeing some drops, but this is merely because Google hates me. But...then they hate me already for a long time

But..on a serious note, YES i do since Google implemented a new change January 6th and it affected some sites of mine negatively.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Yes i am seeing some drops, but this is merely because Google hates me. But...then they hate me already for a long time

Ah, well I think Google hates all of us...at least according to their leaked quality reviewer handbook thing ;-)

[Marketing Fool]

Just an Update: Adsense earnings dropped down to $30 yesterday...and with about an hour and a half left in today, they're at $32...something's definitely going on!! *L*

[bobcarlsjr]

i dont have adsense on my sites but my traffic is going up.. used to be 60-80 UVs a day.. now it's 180-200.. rank used to be 41.. now 22.. maybe another algorithm update?

[Naimath]

Yes, a friend of mine has faced similar problem. But he has had some crappy content on his website. He is already thinking about revising his content and making it more SEO-friendly. Google is getting very stringent in page ranking off late and it surely is going to difficult for everybody, especially for people who don't provide any value to their searchers.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by Naimath

Yes, a friend of mine has faced similar problem. But he has had some crappy content on his website. He is already thinking about revising his content and making it more SEO-friendly. Google is getting very stringent in page ranking off late and it surely is going to difficult for everybody, especially for people who don't provide any value to their searchers.

Ah yeah my content is all crappy too...spun. But that's not to say I don't provide value to the searchers...;-)

[gearmonkey]

My traffic has increased.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by gearmonkey

My traffic has increased.

How much? (round percentage-wise) Do you have one site or many?

[MarlboroMonkey]

My two money sites took a big hot with the algorithm update. Went from 14 for a relatively tough keyword to bouncing between 170 and 1k+. Other site from 2 to 29. Bing and yahoo still love me...

[Rukshan]

Yeah. I noticed a little drop.

[eyefox]

I also have site 2 day ages with 200 visit and now drop to 10 !

[davidtong]

My main site(s) have lost between 20-40% of daily traffic during this period as well... sucks.

[high_plains_drifter]

my sites are gaining traffic but im seeing a massive drop in ad revenue

literally 50% on all sites

i guess in January no advertisers have the budget

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by high_plains_drifter

my sites are gaining traffic but im seeing a massive drop in ad revenue

literally 50% on all sites

i guess in January no advertisers have the budget

You might want to test different placements. Google Plus Your World is changing how people surf a bit, I think.

I January, budgets should be reset. January is always one of my best months across multiple verticals.

Ad targeting could be a problem. I've been removing ad units on a couple website to experiment.

Google "Google Adsense Best Practices" for a document on what Google now says is best practice for ad placements. It's a bit of an eye opener

[pennyjmay]

Its been absolutely abyssmal since the last algo change.
I dont know why as my traffic is still stable - actually it has increased but earnings on adsense is appallingly low - 70% down. All content is very good quality and very Panda friendly - all sites have social presence and good SEO.
Does anyone have a definitive on what exactly changed on 6th jan?

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by pennyjmay

Its been absolutely abyssmal since the last algo change. Does anyone have a definitive on what exactly changed on 6th jan?

That's part of my problem...it seems obvious that there was an algo change, but I can't find any concrete information about it like usual.

So maybe it wasn't so much an algo change but that new google search plus your world insanity, coupled with end of the holiday shopping season ad budget doldrums...I just don't know...

[davidtong]

My problem is invalid clicks or 0.00 CPC... I'm still getting the click volume on one of my sites but none of the clicks make money. The other sites are doing OK.. strange.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by davidtong

My problem is invalid clicks or 0.00 CPC... I'm still getting the click volume on one of my sites but none of the clicks make money. The other sites are doing OK.. strange.

Weird, I'm not seeing anything like that at all...you might check your server logs and try and track down who's doing that, then ban their IP from your site...

[That Guy]

Didn't realized there was an significant algo update on Jan 6, but looking at my adsense account I can see that there was a huge increase in traffic. It was actually about a 45% increase in traffic since before the update I was getting about 550 page impressions /day and after the algo update I'm getting more than 800 page impressions/day.

[Valera]

My Traffic Has sort of picked up again, most sites are still ranking really well but the sales are still very sluggish for what I normally consider HOT clickbank products for this time of year...

Maybe people are way behind on their credit card debts, higher unemployment rates, lots of global issues and so on and people struggling to put food on the table increasingly in the U.S as of late and hence, I think they just have a lot less money to spend on crap found on the internet that I seem to be selling...

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by Valera

My Traffic Has sort of picked up again, most sites are still ranking really well but the sales are still very sluggish for what I normally consider HOT clickbank products for this time of year...

Maybe people are way behind on their credit card debts, higher unemployment rates, lots of global issues and so on and people struggling to put food on the table increasingly in the U.S as of late and hence, I think they just have a lot less money to spend on crap found on the internet that I seem to be selling...

Glad to hear your traffic is picking up, at least. Sales will follow I'm sure.

Yeah that was my first thought, that the holidays were over, everyone overspent, we're in a recession...but that doesn't explain my plummeting traffic :-(

Oh well, I launched another hundred sites over the weekend so we'll see how they do within the next few weeks. I'll launch another hundred or so over the next few days.

That should give me some good data to analyze.

[MarathonMan]

MarketingFool, I do believe the PR update may be to blame - Google seems to have removed a high amount of spun/invalid backlinks across the board.

In general, I do not think you can count on your particular business model as a long-term endeavor. Because you're generating exactly the kind of site that Matt Cutts (and most searchers) hate, you're going to constantly be running to stay ahead of the various updates designed to cut you our of the SERPs. Maybe volume can help you for awhile, but you're fighting the Big G here.

I earn a very respectable amount through Adsense (five digits a month) and I own no spun or scraped sites. I don't even do any off-page SEO. My model, which has worked excellently for me so far, is to create value and let money follow.

[davidtong]

Originally Posted by Marketing Fool

Weird, I'm not seeing anything like that at all...you might check your server logs and try and track down who's doing that, then ban their IP from your site...

Thanks...

Question, I see this IP show up on the #1 in the unresolved IP list in AWstats in terms of daily hits: 50.116.74.148

Is this some normal IP address or something malicious? All the domains/sites under the same HG account has this IP as the #1 source of hits and the sites are fundamentally different from each other that odds of the same visitor visiting all my sites are rare.

Is this some 'standard' crawling bot or is something more malicious?

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by MarathonMan

MarketingFool, I do believe the PR update may be to blame - Google seems to have removed a high amount of spun/invalid backlinks across the board.

In general, I do not think you can count on your particular business model as a long-term endeavor. Because you're generating exactly the kind of site that Matt Cutts (and most searchers) hate, you're going to constantly be running to stay ahead of the various updates designed to cut you our of the SERPs. Maybe volume can help you for awhile, but you're fighting the Big G here.

I earn a very respectable amount through Adsense (five digits a month) and I own no spun or scraped sites. I don't even do any off-page SEO. My model, which has worked excellently for me so far, is to create value and let money follow.

Yeah I've owned many sites like yours in the past...good sites..sites people link to in the thousands and love to use. Google destroyed them all in the first Panda update. Across the board.

[davidtong]

Ironic huh... Wish Yahoo/Bing and other search engines actually do make an effort to compete in this realm *sigh*

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by davidtong

Ironic huh... Wish Yahoo/Bing and other search engines actually do make an effort to compete in this realm *sigh*

Definitely. My sites do get some traffic from Bing/hoo but it doesn't compare to what Google sends me...or I should say USED to send me before the 6th of this month! *L*

Microsoft, bless their hearts, keep trying to compete but I doubt they'll ever come close...

[MarathonMan]

Originally Posted by Marketing Fool

Yeah I've owned many sites like yours in the past...good sites..sites people link to in the thousands and love to use. Google destroyed them all in the first Panda update. Across the board.

None of my sites were hit by the first Panda update, but several were hit by a smaller update in October that favored brand-name sites that knocked traffic down quite a bit. All have recovered and traffic has advanced since then, though.

So your sites were hit by the first update? Did they ever recover?

I guess diversity is the name of the game here.

[Marketing Fool]

Originally Posted by MarathonMan

None of my sites were hit by the first Panda update, but several were hit by a smaller update in October that favored brand-name sites that knocked traffic down quite a bit. All have recovered and traffic has advanced since then, though.

So your sites were hit by the first update? Did they ever recover?

I guess diversity is the name of the game here.

Yep they were hit...never recovered...I mean not really. Some came back a little but not enough to justify them as a strategy for the long term.

Diversity...that's the problem. You can't diversify if your strategy is to create high quality sites. To build a really good site takes an enormous amount of time, energy, and/or money (if you're outsourcing quality content).

So it's not like you can build 50 of those diversified sites unless you are like a publicly traded company with huge pockets and a big staff...

So if you've got 1-5 sites that you've spent 6 months to a year building full time and they get hit...you're just screwed. That's why I focus on smaller niche sites now....google hates them as much as they hate all sites not owned by google, but at least I can throw them up quickly and replace them easily when they get smacked by google...*shrugs*

It sounds like I'm bitter, and I'm not...just keeping things in perspective! ;-)

[sandra98]

Originally Posted by MarathonMan

I earn a very respectable amount through Adsense (five digits a month) and I own no spun or scraped sites. I don't even do any off-page SEO. My model, which has worked excellently for me so far, is to create value and let money follow.

MarathonMan - that's really cool. Congratulations on your success!

If you don't mind sharing, how many sites do you have to make five figures on Adsense? Do they usually have quite a number of posts (eg. 25 or more posts)? Thanks.

Marketing Fool - On the topic of traffic drops, I did have a really low showing on Sat, but it seemed to have headed back to normal on Sunday. Let's hope it stays that way.