taberstruths - 2:01 am on Nov 3, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hi all, First time poster, long time lurker.

I run an informational website. I got hit huge last March and April, with a 70% loss of traffic. I made the mistake of having all my eggs in one basket. 90% of my traffic came from Google. I changed things up, read everything I could get my hands on, removed links I was in control of on some niche related but old directories ect. Nothing worked. So I made a decision to switch focus. I switched to focusing on social networking. It took 6 months to make the transition and stop the slowly eroding slide of traffic. Last month we were up 14% even though search was down 4% from the previous month.
The last 2 days, we have been up, but not from search. Today, even though it is Friday, which we always seem to be down, we are up 6% even though search is down 13%. 6 months ago I kissed Google goodbye, I kissed link building goodbye, I kissed off page SEO goodbye. I focused on courting a new girlfriend called Social media. Today she is treating me pretty good and in another 6 months she will be my #1 traffic referrer. Guys, I am not trying to be rude, but the game has changed. Either play ball or go find a new job.
BTW, so you understand what type of site I am talking about. It is a 800 page site related around a large niche. It gets over 1,000 uniques per day.It is 1.5 years old. It has 10 contributing authors who are mainly bloggers in the niche with their own blogs as well. The only thing we do is light handed on page SEO and social networking primarily with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
I don't know if any of this will help you guys, but you can recover from Google. You just have to kiss them Goodbye and go for other traffic sources.
(edited to give you approximate traffic numbers)