50% Google traffic drop - identifying problem, steps to take

[silverbytes]

Noticed a 50% Google traffic drop in one of my sites. Site has some 7 years and has some 170 pages in 3 different languages including English and Spanish.
Several pages was #1 and others in first 10 positions mostly.

Other search engines seems to be ok with rankings including some Yahoo's #1.

Even now wiht half the usual traffic I get lots of bookmarks what is a good indicator to me.

Regarding Google: some pages are still #1 but other pages are dozenz or hundred of pages down now for older keyphrase.

However I noticed that if I pick just some words of my keyphrase my page ranks in first 10 or 30 results, while using the old 2 words keywords phrase that used to rank #1, results in #300

I haven't changed site so I wonder why Google went from love to hate whith those pages...

So what I'm doing is "deoptimizing" pages, lowering keyword density and wait, but I'm not sure about it.
I'm asuming a kind of -950 penalty [webmasterworld.com...]

Perhaps I just need to wait (in case my case matches this: [webmasterworld.com...] )

Site was banned in wikipedia months ago, but never had problems with google about it and I don't think Google use wikipedia to consider a site good or not.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:00 pm (utc) on July 23, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]

[silverbytes]

I'm updating this thread about my site. It has been 3 months since I posted and this is the situation today:
Site is still ranking badly. Traffic increased some. Let's say I had a 100% of traffic in May 2008, decreased to half in June and now in October is 60% of May. I think anyway that increment in traffic is not related to a better serps achievement but for natural reasons about topic and seasons. Most of pages don't show in first 200 serp. Some show between 70 to 100. I get some 3 or 4 pages in first 5 positions (those bringme 80% of site traffic).
New pages created are not still indexed one month later.

Removed almost 100% of old text to eliminate duplicated content (since freelancer who made it copied 70% text from wikipedia and other sites, and I knew later). Site has less text than before, but pages with more text doesn't seems to be performing better).

About better page ranking in my site: Seems like google is not rewarding my targeted kewyphrase no matter what I target. But is there an incidental result: I target "Blue Old Widgets Anywhere" and Google put my site away from first results or doesn't even show at all.
But if I put a completely different search including the word "widget" it shows my page in first 10 results.

Looks like if Google decided not show what I target on purpose.

Images search results are almost gone even when I have tons of well tagged photos.

1) Didn't fill reinclusion request. It is time to do it?

2) And BTW wouldn't be better to set up a new domain, close down this one and put the content again in new domain? I guess I'll have to wait a year to get some serp if that "gets rid" of the penalty. But does google "rember" content in order to keep penalizing the modified content even if that is placed in a new domain?

[szykman]

1) Didn't fill reinclusion request. It is time to do it?

no harm on doing so i guess

2) And BTW wouldn't be better to set up a new domain, close down this one and put the content again in new domain? I guess I'll have to wait a year to get some serp if that "gets rid" of the penalty. But does google "rember" content in order to keep penalizing the modified content even if that is placed in a new domain?

i think you cannot simply duplicate the domain you need to use headers to mode permanently the url maybe a htaccess file if your server is apache it probably supports handlers

did you check it out the yo-yo and october changes threads going on here? i checked thousand times my eyes are sored it is hard to get a clue

surely there are de-otimizated sites performing good at serp but there are well otimized sites performing well i think old sites are also affected in some ways my site has 4 years and it is suffering now... pretty lame yo-yo

[silverbytes]

Are you sure No harm on doing reinclusion request?

Sounds like accepting you spammed Google. I'm afraid that have repercusions on my other sites (not this one since it's having trouble already)

2) I'm talking about aborting my problematic domain and starting a new fresh one using same content.
I don't think yo yo is going on here since I dont reach great positions in last 2 months... Sems like i getting the donw part only ;)

[szykman]

i understand your concerns but in the request reconsideration form you can describe that you think is a bug or something wrong as an issue and not a spam or black hat

[google.com...]

i submited once a request like that don`t think they will label us as bad guys as i spoke only the truth and did nothing wrong or different from any other site that is performing well today

2) that you said item 2 sounds more your problem is old or low back links and old content

i am also wondering on making a new brand new site as i cannot relay on googles faith waiting without doing nothing so in my personal opinion is a final but ultra-important decision to start a new domain and site content...

[trinorthlighting]

I would consider adding content and additional relevant pages. That might help pull you out.

[misterjinx]

silverbytes if you use Google Analytics did you verify you're not yoyo-ing? Day after day I see more and more sites in Google's yoyo.

[silverbytes]

I don't use analytics but I think I'm not. Added some new content (not much) but it is not even indexed...

I'll try adding more text since perhaps is very little right now.

[misterjinx]

Ok check your better keywords, those with higher ranking, in a long period of time like 1 year. And see if you discover for some keyword a "strange" behaviour like extended up and down of traffic.

[silverbytes]

I'm updating this post. It has been some months since this drop. Filled reinclusion request 3 weeks ago after cleaning site as much as I could but site is not performing ok in most of searches. Pages that "survided" the drop ranks as good as always. General traffic recovered a 20% but thats because natural causes (people search more in december due to nature of content of my site).

Is 3 weeks reasonable time to releas a penalty in relation to reinclusion request?

[tedster]

Three weeks is reasonable for seeing "something" happen - but many penalties are released gradually and step by step, rather than all at once.

[silverbytes]

I asked google in reinclusion request to let me know if I can modify / fix anything else. Is it reasonable to expect they tell me something in that case or that never happens, I mean even if they still consider is there something wrong, will ever tell me?

I stick to guidelines as much as possible.

[SEOPTI]

No, they will never tell you, their communication with webmasters is horrible, their penalty notification is non-existent. Statistically they probably help 1 out of 10000 webmasters in their Google Groups.

The way they treat webmasters who provide content for their search is poor but still you need to try to deal with this kind of people because they have a monopoly in search, there is no other way.

[Marcia]

About better page ranking in my site: Seems like google is not rewarding my targeted kewyphrase no matter what I target. But is there an incidental result: I target "Blue Old Widgets Anywhere" and Google put my site away from first results or doesn't even show at all.
But if I put a completely different search including the word "widget" it shows my page in first 10 results.

Looks like if Google decided not show what I target on purpose.

That sounds like it could be a keyword co-occurrence issue. It's possible that one of the words in "Blue Old Widgets Anywhere" (or a shorter phrase within the longer one) isn't supported by "phrase based" factors - related terms or supporting content.

[silverbytes]

Hi Marcia, Would you mind to explain further?