Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
We get a lot of Google traffic on a daily basis. The day before yesterday, the Google organic traffic started to dropped. After doing some research and reading several threads on this forum, we figured out that this is a common problem.
We had the same issue about 8 months ago, but the traffic came back the following day. Now our web site is getting 50% of what we used to get.
I was thinking about contacting Google regarding this issue, but I couldn't find the suitable contact form on Google's page (checked both Webmaster's page and the standard Google contact form). Any suggestions?
[edited by: tedster at 6:35 pm (utc) on Dec. 15, 2006]
I have personalized search turned off; however, for the past several days, when I check the various datacenters, it shows me a different result than I see when I go to just a generic www.google.com. In the past, this has been an omen of things to come (but usually only lasts half a day). This time, I first noticed this phenomenon on 12/11.
Is anyone else seeing different results on datacenter watch (as opposed typing in the keyword phrase naturally)?
However, some of the stats options seem deactivated, among others the crawling statistics. I'm still waiting for a couple of hundred (indexed) pages to get some PR assigned. All in all, I'd second that something's going on.
i resubmitted a few times in the past day, if it said waiting for verification
The new sites are mostly affiliates, replacing the primary sites they represent. Also I see as many as three entries from the same site within the first ten results.
The snippets for most of my pages have reverted to old text - back to the DMOZ home page description I think. My internal pages have usually shown their own snippets describing specific products, now they are all the same.
This is just too different to be "right". Waiting for the other shoe to drop....
[edited by: Skier at 1:58 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]
Today (*knock on wood*) sitemaps is saying they are included in the index. Home page crawl is also showing a more reasonable date. Last night it was rather far behind what I knew was the last time Gbot had crawled the main pages.
My guess (and hope) is that what we're all seeing is just a hiccup and that they are doing some serious maintenance. Something went a bit wrong, but it looks like they're working on it.
Looking at the SERPs our positions seem to be somewhere between where they were prior to the previous update, and where they were after that update. Kind of in the middle. For example, one deep keyword I keep track of as a sort of measuring stick was #140 2 updates ago, then it was #110 after the latest update, and now it's #121 as of like Thursday.
Plus, all the preffered domain changes are gone...
site:example.com
example.com/search.htm first followed by all my KMZ KML files
(Google place mark files) a little bit mixed by the weakest pages on my site.
Around 30
example.com/sitemap.htm
example.com/news.htm
example.com/index.htm
I have some pages with links to place mark files like
example.com/interesting-city/sight.htm links with a Google earth
icon to
example.com/interesting-city/sight.kmz
So every *.kmz file has only 1 link.
search.htm has even 0 links.
I have on every page a Google AdSense search box.
The search box is configured to show results on example.com/search.htm
So search.htm has not one real link, only the indirect from the search box.
When I ask Google just after my domain name without TLD ending,
nothing to find under the first 100.
Before December 15th, also under heavy penalty, it started around place 38
Great! All my efforts to fix eventual problems result in a far more heavy penalty.
Bad bad bad bad surprise..... i would say that is a master change of the index...
itloc
Why there's no statement from google?
Why there's no answer from M.Cutts?
Why it doesn't matter for google, if a lot of webmasters losing their existence?
How can google waive for so much adsense takings?
The dropping continues permanently since nearly two weeks, without any sign for a possible reason. I can exlude scrapers or hijacking, because my domain ist to stromg for that and no similar text to my pages are shown in the serps.
This is the hardest hit my website has taken so far since it's relaunch in 2004. You might remember - there have been some pretty nasty (some named) updates since then.
I do hope this is a glitch - otherwise I don't know what to do.
Best luck for you all
itloc
ps. My website is whitehat and quality.
That's not an update but a downdate.
one update from my side - most of my important pages went supplemental.
if this index will stay - I gonna build my own search engine then.
itloc
What gets me, is that sitemaps is definitely broken and has been now for a couple of weeks and with absolutely no word from google. That to me, is not very professional.
I have never seen that before and the fact that nearly 95% of my entire site (large, high PR, quality, whitehat) went supplemental AND another site that has been (and IS) redirected 2 months ago to a new location (301) just came back ...
Ladies and gentleman - Google is broken again. And this time they really broke it.
I really hope they are aware (100% sure they are) and I hope they can fix that fast.
Depressed regards
itloc
Looking at the SERPs our positions seem to be somewhere between where they were prior to the previous update, and where they were after that update. Kind of in the middle. For example, one deep keyword I keep track of as a sort of measuring stick was #140 2 updates ago, then it was #110 after the latest update, and now it's #121 as of like Thursday.
This morning it's now #113. It's more like a constant shuffling than an update.
[edited by: ALbino at 6:31 pm (utc) on Dec. 17, 2006]
