Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So yesterday I had decent traffic for the first time in a few weeks - today it's the lowest i've ever seen it. Like since launching it 4 years ago.
No clue why...Can't put my finger on it at all.
[edited by: tedster at 5:42 pm (utc) on April 1, 2007]
I noticed a nice increase in google traffic starting in January. Then March 5th - my traffic from google quadrupled. I'ts like they turned on the traffic machine for me. The whole month of March was the best I've ever experienced with this or any site. It was great.
I use the term was, because April it all stopped. Gone. My traffic has dried up.
I noticed the same thing...as it turns out most of the increase was due to google images traffic. As of last Friday all my images vanisged from Google and traffic plummeted. Search has remained fairly consistent though. Do you have a lot of images on your site that might be pulling in traffic?
Comments please
Google... if you're listening .. I'd gladly GLADLY trade you the fall for spring.
Spring is generally our busiest time and floats us for the rest of the year. The last two years we've gotten tossed in the early spring of course. It has hurt us badly.
I noticed a nice increase in google traffic starting in January. Then March 5th - my traffic from google quadrupled. I'ts like they turned on the traffic machine for me. The whole month of March was the best I've ever experienced with this or any site. It was great.
I use the term was, because April it all stopped. Gone. My traffic has dried up.I noticed the same thing...as it turns out most of the increase was due to google images traffic. As of last Friday all my images vanisged from Google and traffic plummeted. Search has remained fairly consistent though. Do you have a lot of images on your site that might be pulling in traffic?
No, hardly any images at all. Most of my traffic is local long tail searches.
BWNBWN - Bewenched
You must be in weight loss
Nope ... automotive , but I should be in therapy <grin>
However, as for the few keywords I regularly monitor, this hardly ever affects the top 1-3 spots, but only those "below the fold."
Two questions came up for me reading this thread:
1) Are there any means to investigate the history of a serp for a given keyword via archive org or so? Or would I have to file this myself?
2) How can I check the success of my long-tail-SERPs in an ever fluctuating algo, particularly if seasonal influences play an additional important role?
This would indicate that tracking user behaviour is a more and more important part of the ranking algos.
you make an interesting point here. with all the data that google is gathering, from their dell google desktop installs for instance, firefox google sync, google analytics etc. etc. i think you're on to a trend here.
a shift away from the 'cat-and-mouse' SE vs. SEO/Webmaster game to determining the SERPs to a much larger degree based on user behavior in larger numbers.
then again, this has been my opinion for a while but slowly but surely it is becoming more and more evident.
I was just studying some SERPs that are showing significant movement where there has been little for many many months. Three out of the previous top five have now fallen into the bottom five - and the only factor I can see right now is freshness.Those three URLs were like fat cats just sitting there and grinnin' forever. They had not been changed in many, many moons - and neither have they showed any relatively current growth in backlinks. The URLs that moved up are much fresher and do show significatn recent backlinks growth.
In the past, Google seemed to forgive relatively unchanging content for certain types of sites, though certainly not for others. Now I'm thinking the algo has shifted, at least a bit.
These falling URLs do not contain e-commerce (though the rest of the domain does) -- they're more of the informational and commentary kind of page for which freshness was not historically much of a factor.
Does this line up with anyone else'e observations?
I am seeing Google favoring fresh "links" as opposed to fresh content.
Every time we do a link campaign we see a large movement in the serps and then we come back down to a more reasonable gain.
I have seen this too. I have also learned that diversity is key. menaing not getting all links from say blogs as opposed to multiple sources, like blogs, static pages, news,reviews, etc..
It is baffling, could be any one or a combo of these,
canonical issues
duplicate content
stale content
new content
hijacks
redirects
user data
virus infestation
analytics
sitemaps
aliens
elvis
One more diagnostic test left for me...
Hello wall,
here comes the spaggetti.
We see the same thing typically, 1-3 hardly move, the others get shuffled for a few days. Then we typically see a reranking.
You just have to pick a keyword and monitor it.
You just have to pick a keyword and monitor it.
Monitoring our main kw sees now even 3 urls from the same site in front of us with even being on No1 and N2 since ages in addition to another doorway page.
Furthermore the top 20 features 8 MFA link collections with PR between 4, 5 and 6 but without any original content or product and much almost 100% duplicated content
Most obviously for that kw Google's "showing the best content" ambition does not seem to have any meaning at all. The search phrase is amining for a free service and the ruling site offers to buy a software that does promiss to connect to the free service without providing any of what users are looking for.
Even none of our real competitors shows up among the top 20 and mainly stuff with opposite meaning or MFA link collections rule.
Responding to the "Google fear - Schmidt thread" at least i have to say that somes sites with relevant quality content still seem to be not that much popular among Google engeneers.
My fear is, that sites with serious content get punished with reduced Google traffic and that MFA link collections and black hat sites will be made rich by Google adsense.
In fact, i would not be surprised if click thru rates on MFA link collections are higher than on sites with sticky and relevant content.
However, this should not be another "conspiracy" thought. But obviously Google April 2007 seems to be getting like a more and more disappointing service to users and real publishers.
Another website that has just overtaken us as well has massive cross linking from another of their spammy sites. On every page on this website they have an anchor text keyword link pointing to their other site. It does look like black hat techniques are being rewarded in Google and the honest web site owner adding proper content is being penalised. Come on Google what is going on?!
the honest web site owner adding proper content is being penalised
I am fearing that Google fails to come up with the best content. I have even given up informing them about dubious search results.
Just simply wish to see newcomers challenging the quality of Google search results.
This is exactly what I have been saying for months as hidden text, link garbage etc is working better than ever.
heck I just wrote an artice it went supplemental when indexed by Google.
Pretty spot on with your observations there tedster, I'm seeing a shift against sites that aren't updating and in favour of those that are.
We do almost daily updates, but for our main keyword a static site with no updates since ages sits on top with even 2 urls.
. . . three URLs were like fat cats just sitting there and grinnin' forever. They had not been changed in many, many moons . . . In the past, Google seemed to forgive relatively unchanging content for certain types of sites, though certainly not for others. Now I'm thinking the algo has shifted, at least a bit. . . . Does this line up with anyone else'e observations?
Yes. In my sector, the fat cat was locked in place at #1 for several years. The content was so out of date, it was virtually useless, but it stayed #1 no matter who else tried to get ahead with valuable fresh content. The weak site added nothing knew except cheesy ads.
About three months ago, it started to slip. Nothing dramatic, maybe one place, two places, and then back to number 1. The next month it slipped to #2, and couldn't get back to #1. The following month it slipped further, to number six or seven. After a recent update, it's stuck at about 12.
One site with fresh content daily for over a year has been moving up each month for several months, climbing maybe one position each month and is now in the top 4.
I think it is logical for Google to give credit to growing sites, so no surprise. I don't think anyone should get a free ride if content is uselessly out of date.
I've been doing fresh content daily for three months and I've moved up one place. Maybe after a year, I'll climb a few more places.
p/g
Since April 1st, I am noticing not much change in the serps for our top 25 keywords, in fact they've been surprisingly stable.
We get 10 times more traffic from Google than Live or Yahoo. I am ranked #1 across about a dozen good keywords and my recent AWstats shows 1500 keyphrases and by month end it's been around 6500+.
(I think the 1500 maybe be an indicator of where we are getting short sheeted, usually that takes off to around 3k or 4k by the 5th of the month) Perhaps our long tail is being "clipped".
I have sprinkled a number of audio monitors on key pages of my site using a script I wrote that beeps, tweets or bongs when someone hits those pages. Over the course of a "good" day, it'll drive you nuts! But since April 1st, it's been like a grave yard. I set a quiet sonar ping sound for the index page of the site, and other more obnoxious sounds for hitting key info pages and order pages and pages through our signup process...Nothing! Hence the term ZOMBIE traffic...
The only sound I've heard lately is the sonar ping, making me feel like Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. However, at the end of the day my logs show 1700 unique visitors (our normal is 1500-2500) and very few sales, less than half of what we had over the last 12 months. It's like only Zombies have visted our site!
Same traffic - less than half the sales....weird.
I also use MUNIN server monitoring and the apache usage graphs are of smaller amplitude with the same amount of daily traffic, indicating that someone is coming to the site, but they are leaving just as fast as they came. Robots? Zombies? hmmm....
This sounds like a common complaint amongst many other site owners, and my audio tracking is putting a face on what may be happening. Is it spring fever? or a rush to get Taxes done? Whatever it is seems to happen every spring, and it's killin' us...
I just home it passes quickly, or we'll be lowering our Google Adwords advertising budget. Hear that Google?
Side note: our site is about 200 pages in total, 58 submitted via sitemaps, a few (less than 100, all related) link trades, very little affiliate stuff, biggest is adsense (one on the right sidebar in a template page) site age: 7 years. PR 5, ping ponging recently to PR4. Niche content, no blackhat. Always stick to webmaster guidelines.
Pretty spot on with your observations there tedster, I'm seeing a shift against sites that aren't updating and in favour of those that are.
Is it spring fever? or a rush to get Taxes done?
Taxes in the U.S. are due on April 15th and April 8th is Easter Sunday. Many schools have spring break this week or next so a lot of people will be on vacation. My traffic is a little lower than average on some sites, but I'm think that is normal for this time of year.
After loosing my best site on 27th March, yesterday I have lost other 4.
Yeeehaaa, lets make a bet shop, how long will this drop be?
Riddle me this:
How can a keyword loaded, ALL affilite links site, with THREE adsense panes per page, claw it's way to a #4 position in organic results?
What's all that garbage about webmaster guidelines, content and all?
[edited by: tedster at 4:53 pm (utc) on April 6, 2007]
How can a keyword loaded, ALL affiliate links site, with THREE adsense panes per page, claw it's way to a #4 position in organic results?
Google wants it like that.
Why is Google so very often dumping authority sites with real content and why don`t they simply weed out all that less relevant, fake and pirated stuff.
They employ masses of developers for any new product but do not throw in a few dimes to control at least a few thousand keywords with care and competence.
Hire 10 grandmas with good education and they will tell what is usefull and what is poor. You do not need to know linux and java for that.
Certainly Google receives tons of comments and details for some of their sadest search results ... in myase no response and no changes since ages with a joke site having 3 urls among the top 20 and 2 of them at the very top.
Google does not seem to care for whatever reasons and their adsense stream is too often for those, who offer the very least.
So no one has a plan of action?
Think and build for the long term, and don't try to micromanage Google.
Dips happen. Spikes happen. Long-range success is what counts.
