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IS this the google dance or penalty?

by Spacevt
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello everyone,

I dont do much writing here, but am on this site just about everyday...

Anyways, Im having a kinda crisis with my money site. You see, I have bought several link wheels, bookmark submissions, ect. to boost my rank, and as it turns out, I rank #1 in google for at least 20-30 search terms. Mostly long-tail, but some fairly competitive terms.

Well, my Alexa traffic rank in the US was under 100k (about 87k) and I was getting about 400 unique visits per day. Great right?

Well in the last few days, my US rank has plummeted to 462,999!!! WTF?

My sales are down by at least 50%-65% and my PR is 0, yet I still rank#1 for all my terms and have even gained a few spots for other terms that Im going after.

I figure its either the sites that were originally counted in my link wheels are being de-indexed or im being google slapped hard.

I dont know whats going on, but its got me worried.:confused:

Has this every happened to anyone else?
#dance #google #penalty
  • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
    Originally Posted by Ricky Richter View Post

    Hello everyone,

    I dont do much writing here, but am on this site just about everyday...

    Anyways, Im having a kinda crisis with my money site. You see, I have bought several link wheels, bookmark submissions, ect. to boost my rank, and as it turns out, I rank #1 in google for at least 20-30 search terms. Mostly long-tail, but some fairly competitive terms.

    Well, my Alexa traffic rank in the US was under 100k (about 87k) and I was getting about 400 unique visits per day. Great right?

    Well in the last few days, my US rank has plummeted to 462,999!!! WTF?

    My sales are down by at least 50%-65% and my PR is 0, yet I still rank#1 for all my terms and have even gained a few spots for other terms that Im going after.

    I figure its either the sites that were originally counted in my link wheels are being de-indexed or im being google slapped hard.

    I dont know whats going on, but its got me worried.:confused:

    Has this every happened to anyone else?
    Alexa rank does not matter at all. Your sales could be down for a number of reasons. Why would you say you think you're being google slapped and that your still ranked for all of your terms?

    What would make you think you've been google slapped if you're still ranking for all of your search terms and even gaining ground?
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  • Profile picture of the author JackPowers
    Did you have Pagerank before?

    Did you change your site?

    Is your niche 'controversial'?

    Logic tells us that backlinks shouldn't be reason to be punished, unless it can be proven by manual review that you are doing really bad things like hacking websites.\

    If you have been building lots of new links then it's perfectly normal to bounce around. Come back in a few days if thins are still bad.
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    • Profile picture of the author Spacevt
      There is a direct relationship to the lack of sales that I had and my Alexa traffic rank. When my Alexa rank dropped so did my sales. My analytics also show a drop in traffic. This is not a coincidence.

      I did have page rank before, it was 2. Now 0

      My site is not controversial at all, its about weight loss and fitness.

      I did make some changes, but minor changes to my content. I updated the content today. The changes enhanced the page so Im seeing if this was a factor in the sudden drop of sales.

      One statistic stands out in my analytics. My bounce rate is very high. It was about 68% before when sales were up. Now its climbed up to 72%. This could also be a factor.

      This has been going on for over a week now so the only thing I could think of is that my site is normalizing amoungst the SERPs on a international level instead of a localized level.

      Either way, its really weird.
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      -SpaceVT-
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      • Profile picture of the author JoshBrown
        Whats your cache date and how does that compare to when you noticed the sudden decrease in traffic?
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        • Profile picture of the author Spacevt
          Originally Posted by JoshBrown View Post

          Whats your cache date and how does that compare to when you noticed the sudden decrease in traffic?
          It looks like it was cache today with the new changes. As far as how it compares, im not entirely sure.

          My bounce rate for yesterday was 74% yikes.

          I am at a loss here. I think I need to do a re-design.
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          -SpaceVT-
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          • Profile picture of the author JackPowers
            Originally Posted by Ricky Richter View Post

            It looks like it was cache today with the new changes. As far as how it compares, im not entirely sure.

            My bounce rate for yesterday was 74% yikes.

            I am at a loss here. I think I need to do a re-design.
            Probably yes.

            Google does factor in bounce rate, I'm sure of it.
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