Traffic Blackout?

Maybe Google's devaulation of the site?

[travelvice]

I'm rather baffled by this, and I was hoping someone could shed some light on what my be happening.

Pictures speak louder than words, so please take a look at this dashboard screenshot for reference: <snip>

I've got a portion of my site on a subdomain called the 'compendium', which seeks to provide a place for people to contribute on a multitude of travel-related subjects.

This past June my traffic suddenly drops to near zero (like 30 visits/day) -- lasting for about a month. Then, in late-August visitors hits again dropped suddenly, and have remained this way for many months. I thought the bad times were over in December, but the spike was short-lived, and we're back to <30/visits/day again.

Why the sudden reporting falloff? Nearly all my traffic on this subdomain comes from organic searches via Google -- is it possible this portion of my site has been devalued on search results to the point where it gets no visitors?

[edited by: eelixduppy at 3:05 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2009]
[edit reason] no screenshots, please [/edit]

[cgrantski]

Have you been doing searches on Google to see if you're dropped in the ranks for the keywords that have been sending you visits?

[travelvice]

That's a bit hard to say, as I never took a sample during times of feast, only famine. I wish the group admin hadn't chopped the screenshot -- hard to illustrate the problem without an image.

[cgrantski]

Then another question would be --- for the organic terms that were bringing a lot of traffic formerly (as shown by your analytics) --- when you search on them now, is your site on the first page of results? fifth?

Check Google Search Trends for those terms to be sure the terms are being searched on as much as before.

Seems very likely and obvious that if you were getting a lot of Google organic search before, and you aren't now, that your listings just aren't being seen any more because they've dropped 'way down.

The other possibility is that the blurb that appears with your listings (the description) is now different from what it was before, and is less enticing or interesting in some way.