Sudden drop in traffic every year - why?

[Romac34]

Hi I have a link directory that brings home the bacon. That is, most of the year. Because like now for instance traffic from Google drops to a third of what it is usually. All my other sites are steady, just my link directory traffic is down, and with it my Adsense revenue. This happens every year around the same time and after a few months the traffic goes up and so do the earnings. Can someone give me an insight into why this could be? You can understand that when my income drops to a third, I get... well I get a little upset!

[norbiu]

It's odd. Yesterday I had a 50% traffic drop. I checked Google and noticed that almost 30% of my pages and images were missing, but it's all back now.

[netmeg]

That's not really an AdSense issue, but more a Google Search issue. I've heard there's been some shifting around a lot on search results lately, haven't seen it myself as yet.

[Erku]

Sudden huge drop here too, I was waiting for this discussion.

[koan]

This happens every year around the same time and after a few months the traffic goes up and so do the earnings.

If it happens every year why is it a surprise? The reason must be seasonal.

[ken_b]

This happens every year around the same time ...

If it's been happening for years it sounds like a business cycle more than anything else.

[explorador]

If it's been happening for years it sounds like a business cycle more than anything else.

Very true. After having Adsense for some years now, I can check and compare X month to any previous year and some tendencies are very very clear and helpful to avoid panic.

What is becoming very clear for many, is how traffic goes up but the earnings stay the same, I guess is because of having more competitors, less ads, etc.

[Romac34]

OK surprise is not the right word. I know it happens every year, but what causes it? Seasonal is when all my sites see less traffic, but the rest is fine, its just my link directory every time. Oh and sorry if its not entirely the right forum. I'm more concerned with my earnings as you can imagine so thats why I wandered over to the Adsense forum to post this.

[fearlessrick]

Whatever causes G to have strange traffic variations, it is indicative of some major disruptions, in my view. For me, after having my traffic cut by about 1/3 earlier in the month, the new flavor seems to be not counting my traffic after 7:00 ET. It's really odd, because I have CPM ads that show steady nighttime traffic, but G just doesn't seem to count it. Maybe they'er running PSAs on my site at night?

Whatever it is, changes are coming because they have to ameliorate the effects of social networking. Search is evolving.