My site visits dropped from 50K to less than 10K - June 2nd

[baio77]

My site used to have a good position in Google search, but since june 2, Google (Caffein?) dropped me to 2nd, 3rd... and 7th page. I used to have 50,000 visits per day, but now, I'm under 10.000 and if it continues, I won't even be able to pay for the 2 servers I'm using.

If I search for a title written in my site (like "This person is going to be in this place"), the first result is a news container (that takes feeds from different sites). The second result is a site that have my site inside an iframe (consuming my resources). My site, with original content appears in 3rd place.

I tried to optimize my site, making it faster, cleaning html, adding description tag and canonicals, but in some cases I don't even appear in the 10th page, while sites that copy my content appear in the 1st Google search page.

I read that server location could be a reason, but before june 2 I never had problems. My site is a .com.ar, but the servers are located in USA.

Please, I need some urgent help.

[tedster]

Hello baio77, and welcome to the forums.

For purposes of your analysis, you should appreciate that Caffeine was essentially an infrastructure upgrade (of major proportions) -- but changes to the ranking algorithm were independent of which infrastructure was being used for any particular search. Caffeine is about Google being able to update the search results FASTER, but not really about different rankings or penalties.

We keep a monthly reference [webmasterworld.com] of members observations about the SERPs. Here's a link to the June SERPs Update thread [webmasterworld.com] - it may help yoi analyze what happened to your rankings at thar point in time.

You describe being replaced by people who reprint your content - so somehow Google lost track of your site being the original publisher. There are a few other reports here right now of similar problems. Is there any reason you can see that the sites that replaced you would be seen as more authoritative than yours?

[baio77]

Hi tedster, thanks for the answer. I'tll take a look to the monthly reference.

Even if they let a link to my page, it doesn't matter if the site that copy me is a big "news compiler", a news agency, an OnLine Newspaper or a small blog. Some of them have A LOT of keywords that don't describe the content. I really can't undestand.

As soon as I post an entry, it's still inmediatly indexed by Google. But, before june, if I searched textually for a title I posted, I appeared in the first position. Now if I look textually for a title, if I'm lucky, I appear in the botton of the first page but with the Home, not with the entry, and as soon as anyone copy my content, even if it's 12 hours later, I disappear and they go to the first position.

I'm really desesperated because I don't know what's going wrong with my work and I don't know what else I could do to revert it.

[tedster]

I wish I had a quick fix for you - I don't. This is a problem that many people currently have with Google when their content is reprinted on a more powerful domain. The only fix for now that I can think of is to market the bejeezus out of your own pages and get more links with authority that point to YOU.

And maybe cast a few spells to get Google to do a more honorable job of attributing the content to its creator rather than the republisher.

[tedster]

I think this shift at Google is recent, a part of their recent emphasis on ranking the SITES or BRANDS that they feel are good destinations for their end users. It all began with "Mayday" and has been getting tweaked since then.

Google used to do a better job of honoring the actual content owner when they ranked pretty much by the page -- and maybe they will be able to do that again, someday soon. In the meantime, marketing your own content is always a good idea. It's possible that just a few strong backlinks will shift the balance for you.

[baio77]

Thanks,

I hope Google change soon, because as it is I won't be able to affort the servers and redactors.

One more question: I recently read that it's important if your server is located in your own country. Right now, my site is a ".ar (Argentina)" but the servers are in USA. Do you know if it could be influencing in my ranking position?

[tedster]

Did you lose international traffic, or traffic from Argentina?

[baio77]

I lost international and argentinian traffic:

2009: july 20 to july 26
- Argentina: 364,375
- Mexico: 22,338
- Spain: 18,171
- Uruguay 12,113
- Chile: 10,875
- Peru: 7,875

2010: july 20 to july 26
- Argentina 44,618
- Mexico: 4,950
- Spain: 3,212
- Uruguay 2,547
- Chile 2,139
- Peru: 1,430

[tedster]

Well, a .ar domain is going to be strongest for Argentina, no matter where the server is located. So it looks to me like another factor is at work in your traffic loss - it's across the board.

[Robert Charlton]

...traffic loss - it's across the board.

And roughly by the same order of magnitude... a factor of around 4 - 6 in all countries except Argentina, where the drop is roughly a factor of 8 or 9.

What about this site that has iframed your content? It doesn't sound like this is a licensing arrangement... seems more like a page-jacking. Is it by any chance in Argentina (where your highest percentage of traffic loss was)?

[baio77]

Hi Robert,
I don't know where is the site that have other pages in iframes from. But it has international news in spanish. If you check the source code in the <title> has de "title of the original article" plus "the name of the original site" plus a kind of description that includes words like "news", "videos", "youtube", "pictures", "sports" and "futbol" (soccer). It's really, really, really strange.

[chms]

Hi,

I'm in the same situation, I've lost more or less the 50% of my traffic and I don't know the reason, my site has original content and I think it is good, I'm desperate.

[Tobyha]

the same problem and the same day! Who knows was google updated at 2nd june?

[Vimes]

Baio77,

if you do a whois lookup on the domain name then you should be able to find out where the site is hosted.

Also you should maybe have a look at hot topics thread here [webmasterworld.com...] "defending your rankings" do any of those fit your circumstances, I've seen a lot of proxy pages recently appearing in the serp's again .

Vimes.

[vandread]

I'm in the same boat. Site was hit on June 2, no change ever since. See the same ranking issues as others. Whatever Google did on that day, it hurt a lot of legit webmasters and gave a boost to (some) scraper sites. Also, my site should have more authority than those scraper sites, it is older, got a better pagerank, more links incoming, site links in Google. Rankings on Bing and Yahoo are constant, they actually are now providing together almost as much traffic as Google does. Previously it was about 75% Google and 10% each.

If anyone comes up with a solution I'm more than glad to test it on my site. I personally think it could be an internal filter or something that has been applied automatically in error. Tried a reinclusion request, did not help. Tried posting in the Google Webmaster Forum, no solution or help there either.

I'm out of options on this one. Other sites on the same server have not been hit and are ranking fine as before.

[mhansen]

Just thought I would jump in and mention that it was EXACTLY June 2nd -June 4th for 3 sites I manage as well. (I manage many, but only these three were affected on this exact date, the others are fine)

Since June 2nd, I have actually shut down 2 of the three sites, due to dismal results and no longer wanting to devote time to a losing venue. The third site is still in place, but running at a loss-rate of 40% year over year.

It is an e-commerce/affiliation website, where we handle actual product sales about 60% of the time and refer buyers to other places they can buy the products we don't stock or drop ship.

ALL foot-traffic loss has been from Google search, roughly 65-70% drop of all Google referrals are simply gone.

- The terms that have dropped have been a mix of long tail, brand, and really just general terms. There is no rhyme or reason behind the drop except that its gone.

- I see a LOT of pogo-sticking of SERP's, with one phrase ranking well today, and nowhere to be found tomorrow. (When I DO check rank, which is not often, its done behind a firefox plugin that proxies my ip and I never click my own results)

- The 3 affected sites were all in the same GWT account, all had adsense from the same account, and were all umbrella'd in the same analytics account as well. I have since created a separate Google services account, and this single site resides there alone.

- The remaining site now ranks for phrases that were dropped from targeting more than 2 years ago! Almost like it was "Reset" to pre-2008. Then tomorrow... it wont rank for those phrases at all!

- SERPS for my previously profitable search phrases are now dominated by spam and mashup sites.

Now for what we have done to it thus far...

- Put it on a dedicated server to make it faster
- Tweaked server caching and spent several days reducing page/image/css/etc sizes.
- We had 2 adsense blocks, they are gone.
- Removed common WMT, Analytics and any other footprint to Google, across ALL websites I am a part of.

I also sent in a reinclusion request to Google, who replied with the canned message after 4 days. (Mid June) Unfortunately, I was a little emotional in the request and it may have hurt my effort, more than it helped.

I had considered going to the Webmaster Forums of Gorg and asking for a public review, but to be honest... I would rather suffer a public stoning.

I have been around web development since building my first site in 1994 and while the Florida update had little to no effect on me, this one is kicking me in the teeth on a few select sites! :-/

I also wear a VERY THICK Google tin-foil-hat and fully believe Google tracks every step I take on the web, associates those steps to my own properties and applies filters based on a profile they keep about me.

[StoutFiles]

while sites that copy my content appear in the 1st Google search page.

You need to be filling out DMCA's to these sites and requesting Google to drop the offending pages.

[baio77]

Vimes: The site that have other sites in an iFrame, according to DomainCrawler is located in USA. About this site I have to say that it also show my adsenses, but it have its own adsense in the top of the page.

vandread: I have good ranking position in Bing and Yahoo, but the 90% of visits used to come from Google :(

mhansen: I have other site too, wich was not affected by MayDay. The only different that it had with the affected one is that its content is not as coppied by other sites as the affected one, but it have the same company server, the same script (wordpress) and had the same template (I changed the affected site to make it faster).

[walrus]

I see in other threads on this forum and others, quite a few posts reporting a loss of traffic even while they still have good rankings. I see client sites totally unaffected by any of the changes this year as well as a few of my own which kept many rankings but lost a lot of traffic. Now we see the beginning of another month and some of the first posts are sites that have maintained good rankings steadily for years getting hit hard.

Seems like few are not getting hit somehow. A new nastier everflux, where number 1 in the serps is really now number 4, and a new left nav to distract even more vistors from clicking your number 4 result, or any of us below that.

The stats on how many use the left nav would be interesting.

[edited by: walrus at 3:44 pm (utc) on Aug 4, 2010]

[baio77]

You need to be filling out DMCA's to these sites and requesting Google to drop the offending pages.

StoutFiles, how do I do that?

[StoutFiles]

[google.com...]

[vandread]

One funny thing that I noticed is that some sites rank in front of mine, even if they only post an excerpt of the article, say 50 words including a read more link to my site.

About the DCMA complaint. I usually contact the webmaster directly, if I can find the information before i turn to other means.

Anyone knows if the posting of excerpts falls under DMCA as well?

[Planet13]

One funny thing that I noticed is that some sites rank in front of mine, even if they only post an excerpt of the article, say 50 words including a read more link to my site...

...Anyone knows if the posting of excerpts falls under DMCA as well?

If it DOESN'T fall under the DMCA, then maybe that is what we ALL need to do...

Suppose you have an ecommerce site on widgets (or an informational site and you have adsense). Then aside from having your original content appear on your site, you also add excerpts from other sites (similar to the example mentioned above) in addition to the original content.

Of course, if one day google decides to wake up and smell the coffee and discount the excerpts / scraped content, then you would be hosed.

[baio77]

vandread, I'm having the same problem.

About DCMA, I sent a letter to a server wich hosted a duplicated site of mine, and they took around 2 months to remove the content. And I am not sure if it is only for American sites.

I contacted a webmaster that copies my content, but he told me he would continue copying because it was redituable for him. Unfortunatly we haven't got leagal weapons against it in Argentina

[Planet13]

I contacted a webmaster that copies my content, but he told me he would continue copying because it was redituable for him. Unfortunatly we haven't got leagal weapons against it in Argentina

Can you file a DMCA complaint and notify google?

also, for those sites that are scraping your content, you mentioned that your Adsense are still showing - are you still making revenue from it?

Also, in google analytics, have you seen a shift in which keywords are performing well for you and which ones aren't?

[vandread]

I'm still thinking that my site has triggered a filter, as I otherwise would have a hard time understanding why a site with excerpts and a link back to my site ranks in front (sometimes my site does not appear in the top xx) for the full title search. And those titles are usually unique.

Planet 13, so you say it is ok to ask those websites to remove the contents from their sites? Anyone else who would like to weight in on this?

[mhansen]

he would continue copying because it was redituable for him.

- If he replied to your email, block his IP from your server.
- If he is scraping your RSS, block his server IP from yours.
- Start including 1x1 pixel images (Transparent) near the top of your content, and after 30 days pass... change the image to a 1200x600 image, showing your domain, or something that would REALLY upset his readers!

Getting a scraper to answer is 99% of the problem... now that you have THAT, I would make his life miserable!

MH

[StoutFiles]

About DCMA, I sent a letter to a server wich hosted a duplicated site of mine, and they took around 2 months to remove the content. And I am not sure if it is only for American sites.

Most sites that copy content will NOT bother to listen to your requests. If they did this, it would destroy their business plan!

The whole point of the DMCA with Google is to get them out of search results so you can get your spot in the rankings back. If you want their content removed though, bypass the webmaster and go to their web host with your DMCA.

[baio77]

he would continue copying because it was redituable for him.

- If he replied to your email, block his IP from your server.
- If he is scraping your RSS, block his server IP from yours.
- Start including 1x1 pixel images (Transparent) near the top of your content, and after 30 days pass... change the image to a 1200x600 image, showing your domain, or something that would REALLY upset his readers!

Getting a scraper to answer is 99% of the problem... now that you have THAT, I would make his life miserable!

mhansen, they copy and past manually. We used to have an script that automatically add a "read more link" at the botton, but we took it out because we thought it could be a bad thing for google.
About feeds, we started to show only an exerpt and an irrelevant title. For example, if the title in my site is "3 lions born in the Moon", in the feeds title we put "amazing birth".

[baio77]

I found a video in Youtube where Matt Cutts talks about "mayday" in responce to www.webmasterworld.com/google/4132195.htm. He says it's not a temporary error nor a bug in a filter.
It looks like now a "high quality site" is the one that copy and paste a lot of articles per day from "low quality sites" like mine.

How can it be possible?