Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My site was launched in September 2005. I was heavily sandboxed for several months, not receiving any rank for more popular terms, but ranking well for only moderately popular ones.
I first identified datacenters that were beginning to show me out of the sandbox in April. These DCs came in and out, spreading, then retreating for several weeks. I'm reasonably certain this was testing for the major update that finally went into effect June 27. I don't think the changes in the algo are what boosted me, but rather the fact that it was a google update, and my time had come to be taken out of the sandbox.
So on June 27 I came out of the sandbox. I went from around 110,000 daily page views to 160,000. So this was big.
Because I have a new site, I see major changes when google makes updates. I think that gives me the ability to identify changes others might not as readily see.
On Tuesday, Aug 1st changes began happening again. My daily traffic went to 220,000 pages for Aug 1 to Thursday, Aug 3. After these three days, I dropped back down to normal levels. Then, on Tuesday, Aug 8th, it took off again. I was back up to 210,000 pages per day. Again, this lasted for three (Tue-Thu) days, then retreated on the Friday. This weekend, I saw slightly higher traffic than normal, and on Sunday it spiked by at least 10,000 pages. The increase continued overnight, and seemed to stop Monday morning.
Now, all of this week, I've been back to normal levels of traffic again. So, what is going on here?
We had two weeks with Tuesday-Thursday testing, one Sunday test, then it all went away. Is this the early sign of another Google update? I'm having trouble seeing differences <with online tools> between datacenters, but I assume things aren't as easy to detect anymore.
Thoughts?
[edited by: tedster at 4:28 am (utc) on Aug. 17, 2006]
I haven't been seeing major traffic changes from Google over the date ranges you blocked out, but there have definitely been some changes in the site: operator results and hiccups for established sites with Supplemental urls. These days, the plain old "update" label is passe anyway. Now we get relatively frequent "data refreshes", less frequent "algorithm updates" and more rarely -- an "index update".
So, is anyone else seeing a pattern of Google traffic change over these dates that zap995 mentioned?
Aug 1 - Aug 3
Aug 8 - Aug 10
This past weekend (Sat up through early Mon?)
Not many links, no spam or black hat.
Related links and directory links only.
1 st PR3 in JUN 27
any duplicate content.
I don't believe in sand box, there a few competitors.
Over optimization i don't think so.
I don't understand what's up.
GG visitors are only 10% today
