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Organic Traffic Heavily Reduced After VPS Upgrade??

by AK86
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Over the past 3 days, after upgrading my VPS package, a website of mine has had a significant drop in organic traffic, specifically from Big G. I am aware there was Google Pigeon update around the same time but, from what I've read, it was targeted at Local results mostly, which should have no effect on this website.

Here's some background information:
This is not a new website, it is well established (about 6 years now) and has had relatively consistent traffic for the past few years.

Prior to the VPS upgrade my web host had a "catastrophic system failure" and the site was offline for about half a day. They then quickly moved the VPS to a temporary environment to get the sites back online. Once that was done, traffic returned to its normal levels and was even on an upward trend. About 5 days after that, they migrate my VPS to their production environment, and that's when everything has gone to shambles.

Screen capture of Analytics during recent events


Screen capture of Webmaster Tools > Search Queries during recent events


Has anybody ever experienced something like this?

Are there any tools or resources available that will help troubleshoot and identify the cause of this, as the only change to the website was the VPS upgrade- no link building had been going on or changes to the website itself.
#heavily #organic #reduced #traffic #upgrade #vps
  • Profile picture of the author arvind031989
    can you please check webmaster tool also see in manual action
    https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/manual-action
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  • Profile picture of the author arvind031989
    if their is no manual actions against the website then very nice sir
    as per you sir "catastrophic system failure" and the site was offline for about half a day
    then in webmaster tool you see lots of robots txt fetch error also
    so just resubmit your sitemap and it will fine very soon and fix error in webmaster tool as soon as possible
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  • Profile picture of the author RyanLB
    Did you notice any ranking drops as a result of the site being offline? I've seen some of my own sites take a hit after going down for a period of time.
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    I'm a Freelance Copywriter that helps Agencies, Startups and Businesses Educate Their Audience and Grow Sales
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    • Profile picture of the author AK86
      Originally Posted by RyanLB View Post

      Did you notice any ranking drops as a result of the site being offline? I've seen some of my own sites take a hit after going down for a period of time.
      Negative.

      As shown, in the screen capture of the analytics, traffic bounced back to normal levels after the half a day of downtime. I have experienced downtime with the host before as well, and everything always bounces back immediately.
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  • Profile picture of the author mkgg
    How is the new server speed-wise ? I have seen ranking improvements or drops (just a couple positions but it makes enough difference) depending how fast the server is and my site loads.

    If you site speed is slower than it used to be then most likely your rankings would have dropped a position or two.

    Another thing to consider that server you are being hosted on right now could be marked as suspicious/bad neighborhood/spammy, google said they take this into consideration so take note of your server ip and google it to see it doesn't pop up in any spam report sites.

    This is also assuming all of your pages are being loaded fine and no 404s or server errors are being generated. Use google WMT to see if you get any 404s/403 or timeout errors when google crawls your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author AK86
      Originally Posted by mkgg View Post

      How is the new server speed-wise ? I have seen ranking improvements or drops (just a couple positions but it makes enough difference) depending how fast the server is and my site loads.

      If you site speed is slower than it used to be then most likely your rankings would have dropped a position or two.

      Another thing to consider that server you are being hosted on right now could be marked as suspicious/bad neighborhood/spammy, google said they take this into consideration so take note of your server ip and google it to see it doesn't pop up in any spam report sites.

      This is also assuming all of your pages are being loaded fine and no 404s or server errors are being generated. Use google WMT to see if you get any 404s/403 or timeout errors when google crawls your site.
      The new server is an upgraded VPS package from the same host I've been using for years, so the speed is about the same as it has always been. I have heard about page load speeds effecting ranking and I've been through the Google Page Speed test multiple times to make the improvements necessary.

      During the upgrade, the server IP has not changed at all and has been the same IP it has been with the same host for a while so I don't think that's the issue either. I will check the IP on Google though to make sure. About 6 months back I had to go through an ordeal with McAfee Site Advisor to get the website switched from a red x "Malicious" to a green check mark, but haven't had any issues since.

      There are some 404s on Webmaster tools and some timeout errors which occured during the website downtime. Maybe once the website reaches a certain error % for X amount of time then Google will downgrade the listings.

      One thing I've been considering is that within the past couple months the host has received "more than normal" DMCA takedown notices so a lot of URLs have been removed. So I was thinking that maybe a bunch of URLs were removed which had been linked to and it lost some link juice? Though I'm not 100% sure on how that works. If an internal page is linked to, and then gets removed, and non-existent URLs get redirected to the homepage, is the link juice then passed to the homepage or removed all together?

      I'm going to keep digging into the issue. Will probably be switching hosts within the next billing cycle and report back. If anybody else has experience or suggestions regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated!
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  • Profile picture of the author michaelcvang
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author KeithYoung
      Originally Posted by michaelcvang View Post

      Same problem with me. What is the solution?
      First check that whether your site has any Google penalties or not by using webmaster tool.
      After that evaluate your sitemap and content as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    We have been trying to explain this to people for a while, but they didn't get it - so will just give you the summary. Yes, hosting can materially affect your rankings, for example enterprise companies can generate 25 organic visitors per $1 of hosting per month - we use the same hosting architecture they use and get roughly that - Siteground you will get 1-2 organic visitors per $1 - so to rank you have to do it all by hand - fun fun.

    @mkgg Can you point to the report where you saw this "Another thing to consider that server you are being hosted on right now could be marked as suspicious/bad neighborhood/spammy, google said they take this into consideration"

    What may have happened is that your host put spam sites on the same servers. There is an associative effect, if you sit in a cafe no-one cares and think you are cheap - sit in a 3 michelin star restaurant and people take notice - same thing. There could be other factors but this is the one that stands out.
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  • Profile picture of the author harikhelly
    how it works?????
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  • Profile picture of the author Dokemion
    I never thought of this one.

    I'll give you a bump when I found out that my client's date of VPS upgrade is the same or close to that when his Organic Traffic as well as rankings drop.
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    Contact me for any SEO Services you need I'm glad to be of your service.

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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    @Dokemion - not sure if you are referring to our post or not - no one ever does - it is how the enterprise companies make 10:1 revenue:effort compared to SMEs 1:1. There are other factors but normally the simple ones are the hardest to understand.
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  • Profile picture of the author rhenium3
    I moved to a VPS a few weeks ago and I just got my monthly report - all my hosted sites received a significant drop in traffic from Google. It was consistently going up before.

    Is there anything I can do about this? Or do we just have to start again from scratch?
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    • Profile picture of the author serpyre
      Originally Posted by rhenium3 View Post

      I moved to a VPS a few weeks ago and I just got my monthly report - all my hosted sites received a significant drop in traffic from Google. It was consistently going up before.

      Is there anything I can do about this? Or do we just have to start again from scratch?
      You should really have started your own discussion - which provider did you move from to?
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  • Profile picture of the author rhenium3
    Or with the Panda 4.1 update on the 24th of September, It could have been that Google Algorithm Change History - Moz
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