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Page views have dropped dramatically

by gwynnsh
20 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

I'm new to this site & I was wondering if anyone could help me with a dilemma. I bought a website about a month or so ago on Flippa & I was using adsense on it for about 5 days until my account got disabled. I'm still not really sure why but they stated that invalid clicks was the reason.

Anyway, the person that sold me the site from Flippa was always very slow with support and sometimes didn't bother to help at all. I was making about $23 per day on avg. for those 5 days until my acount was disabled, so I decided to use the same site/my same name but sign up using a different gmail account with a different address (old mailing address) & I was able to create the account once again. So, I went back into my website (using wordpress) & added the ads once again. The first day I made about $8.00 & the next day I made about $11.00 (upward trend slowly back towards the avg.) but starting on the 3rd day the page views went from an avg. of about 3,500 to about 100, then about 30 & now, practially next to nothing. I have analytics installed for the site (not linked together with adsense) & it was also showing the same drastic page view drop.

One important thing that I need to mention is that the seller was banned from Flippa and because of all the horrible support, plus being dropped from adsense the first time, plus trying all the other "adsense alternatives" that made pennies, I decided to dispute the charge on my credit card. The only problem is that I was approved by adsense again during this dispute & the site was starting to make money again but then it's like it just completely disappeared from the internet. I wondered if the site may have been banned or blacklisted by google but I can still access the page & evey link still works fine.

I recently decided to move it to my hosting account over at Hostmonster in the hopes that it will work but the page views are still extremely low. I inserted Chitika along with adsense for the past 3 days to see if there would be a noticeable difference for each one but the impressions/page views are still almost non-existent. I haven't received any notifications from google, the domain registrar or the domain host about anything, so I'm at a loss as to what has happened. The only thing I can think of is maybe my credit card company did something once the fraud investigation started about a week ago that caused google to blacklist my site, but if that were the case then why would I still be able to view the site/ads, etc. with no problems?

Does anyone know what could be wrong or have you had a similar experience? (BTW, most of the traffic is/was coming from China and they were mostly new visitors that stayed on the site for several minutes each time with a decent bounce rate) I checked to see if my site as blacklisted but everything appeared to be ok. I'm new at all of this, so please help me if you can.
#adsense #dramatically #dropped #page #views
  • Profile picture of the author DPM70
    First of all we'd need to establish whether your site was picking up real traffic for targetted keywords. Or was it just a bunch of click-happy bought traffic from China? Looking at the circumstances with the Flippa seller's unresponsive manner and subsequent ban I'd be very wary that you had bought a viable site in the first place.

    Do/did any of your pages rank for any relatively competitive search terms in Google? Is the site targetted towards a Chinese audience?

    Edit: if you do a site:mydomain.com in google search does it return any results?
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  • Profile picture of the author dadamson
    Wow, use some paragraphs and I might be able to read all that!.

    Hope your site isnt like that
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  • Profile picture of the author Green Moon
    It certainly sounds like you might have a site with purchased traffic. However, I had an established site that I bought and owned for about two years when the traffic suddenly dropped by about 80% in a single month last summer. I still don't know what happened

    The links came from a variety of sources, no purchased traffic, and I hadn't done any significant SEO that would have triggered a penalty. Also, it was not during a Panda adjustment to the Google algorithm. Most of the keywords that had ranked on the first page or two of the SERPs fell by several hundred spots, in some cases even 500 posts down. I figured that Google must have imposed a penalty for some reason, so I appealed. Google answered that there was no penalty adjustment.

    So it is possible that some unknown factor triggered the drop and you'll never know.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkvana
    If you have Analytics then your first order of business needs to be analyzing where all that traffic was coming from and figuring out if there's a reason that source dropped.

    Check the sources tab in your analytics and see if it was organic traffic, referral traffic or direct traffic.

    If it was direct traffic, then it was probably fraud.

    Organic traffic dropping could be due to the recent algorithm changes at Google. If this is the case, see what keywords you lost rankings for and try to get those back.

    Finally, if it was referral traffic then see which sites were sending you traffic and try to figure out why they are no longer sending you traffic.

    Follow the clues and you'll have your answer soon enough.
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  • Profile picture of the author lovboa
    Banned
    My eyes hurt!
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    • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
      Linkvana, Green Moon & DPM70: Thanks for all the great responses. According to Google Analytics, it's 98.17% direct traffic, 1.16 search engines & .67% referring sites. So, it was mostly direct traffic but it's just unusual that it went from 3,000-4,000 page views to about 50 views right after I submitted the dispute. It could be that the campaign for the targeted traffic was set to end at precisely that point. (sounds like the most reasonable explanation)

      China & South Korea consist of about 90% of the traffic with about 98% new traffic. There are also about 19 sites linking into the site. Once I started using adsense again the site produced almost 5,000 page views (the first full day) & then fell to 178, 38, 24, 8, 9 & around 11 views yesterday.

      The site ranks very high for the targeted key words (5th or 6th on Google) & it's well established for about 2 years now. It's actually a really good looking, professionally designed website. It uses WordPress & everything is automated and updated, so there shouldn't be any problems there. It worked fine for the first week but like I said, I had to set up another account with adsense & that's when the traffic dropped all of the sudden. Also, it's been about 10 days now since I started my 2nd campaign with adsense & I still can't enter my tax info. or payment info. even though my site reached the $10 threshold during the first day. I was able to enter it almost immediately during my first campaign.

      Since the traffic was direct, I wonder what method was used to promote it? Whatever it was, it was definitely working & I honestly believe the site is legitimate but it seems that I'd have to buy more traffic to get it going again. However, I know adsense is funny it comes to buying traffic so I'm not really sure of the best way to go about purchasing direct traffic.

      I'd certainly be willing to direct more traffic to the website, if I knew the best method & if I knew adsense wouldn't get their panties in a wad. I've been trying IM for about 4 months now and to be able to make over $20 per day from adsense alone was wonderful. I've already spent well over $1,000 trying to make money with affiliate marketing from a few other sites that I had designed but I've only made about $18 and I'm having trouble getting traffic to those sites as well. I used article marketing & some paid traffic but I never really got serious with them. I still need to learn more about how to promote my sites. Please let me know if you guys have any more advice, as it's greatly appreciated. One other thing, I just recently found this forum & I must say that it has a lot of great information!

      Lovboa & dadamson: Is that better?
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  • Profile picture of the author tech84
    wanted to help, but TL;DR
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  • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
    Tech84: Sorry, but what is TL;DR?
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  • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
    Please shoot for positive/helpful comments as opposed to trying to sound cool & make others join in with all the negativity. If you don't want (or can't read) a post then simply move on. I'm only looking for people that are willing to help, not call me out because there were no paragraphs in my initial post.
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  • Profile picture of the author nicktyler
    It is a bit harsh to call you out on it but you could use the edit button and add paragraphs. Solves the problem and you can get back to the point of this thread. Wich, I don't know because I couldn't handle all the text with no paragraphs. Just saying
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    • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
      Paragraphs have been added. I sure hope that helps with all the confusion some were having.
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  • Profile picture of the author nicktyler
    China & South Korea consist of about 90% of the traffic with about 98% new traffic.

    I think this could have something to do with it. Even more so that it is 98%+ direct traffic and the seller being banned from Flippa. It might be an idea to carry on with the credit card dispute. I very much doubt they could do anything that would have the effect you have described.
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  • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
    Thanks. I believe you're probably correct. I guess the paid traffic campaign was just set up to end right around the same time my adsense account was approved.

    When I looked at the revenue report that was generated on Flippa (before I bought the site) it showed an avg. amount of about $800 per month for all of last year. I was making about $23 per day on avg. for about a week, so the site was definitely making money but then my account got disabled & by the time I could get another one set up the traffic ended. Do you know of any paid traffic campaigns I could use to help direct traffic back to the site without breaching any adsense TOS?
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    The site lost traffic then seller decided to scam you by purchasing traffic and unloading site. That's what it sounds like.
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    • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
      Well, if he was purchasing traffic then he did it for at least a year because the revenue report on flippa showed an average of $800 per month for all of 2011. It sounds like the purchased traffic campaign must have been set up to end a couple of weeks after I bought the website. Does anyone know of any paid traffic campaigns that I could use to help direct traffic back to the site without breaching any adsense TOS? Also, what exactly is meant by "unloading" the website?
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  • Profile picture of the author mosthost
    The traffic is complete crap. How many people from China and South Korea are clicking on Google Ads and then BUYING something? Not many.
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  • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
    I'm not sure how many we're actually buying something but I am sure that several people were clicking on the ads, to the tune of about $23 per day on average. Google analytics was showing that over 90% of the visitors were from China or South Korea with 98.17% direct traffic. For the first couple of weeks I was averaging over 3,500 page views per day but since last week the site only averages about 10 visitors per day. So, someone was clicking on the ads (about 35 avg. clicks per day) but I'm just not sure what method was being used, assuming it was PPC.
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  • Profile picture of the author marketwarrior06
    Banned
    i think you don't get SE traffic. and your traffics were from referral sites. have you purchased the traffic? it happens due to these reasons.
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  • Profile picture of the author gwynnsh
    I personally have not purchased any traffic for the site but apparently the previous owner did. Analytics only shows .67% of visits from referrals, so I don't think that's the case. I could probably use adwords or overture to promote the site but I'm just not sure how well it would work in the end.
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