Hi All -
So, I built a new site several months ago and I am looking for your opinions as to why you think Google may be throttling traffic on and off. It reminds me of the Google Sandbox, which does or does not exist depending on who you ask. I assume its a filter or sorts, and opinions are welcome.
I have been around for awhile, built many websites, know my way around SEO practices (and risks) etc ... so no need to use kid gloves. If it ranked crappy all the time, I would accept that and move on to increasing the quality. The issue is that the site is filtered out of serps for 4-7 days, then turned on and ranks as expected, then filtered back out 23-25 hours later.
Facts about the site -
- Domain Regged in July 2010.
- WordPress CMS, minimized plugin and theme load.
- Site opened to public on October 1st, 2010, with 90-ish 1000+ word pages of my own knowledge & experience in the specific industry it serves (buying guides and reviews)
- I have added 1-3 pages every week since it opened.
- Launch marketing consisted of 3, once weekly press releases announcing the site, a few related articles published on popular ezine type article directories, I have submitted to DMOZ (you know that's a long wait) and joined a few conversations related to the site market.
- There have been a few heavy stumbleupon stumbles (+5k stumbles)
- eHow has already copied 5-6 of the pages, rewritten then, referring back to the site with a nofollow link. (Gotta love the web right?)
Google... again, its worth repeating that I understand this site is new and traffic is going to be limited while I continue to build the content. The issue I am trying to figure out is the traffic throttle, being turned 100% on, or 100% off, which is an obvious filter...
Google, is throttling traffic on and off in 24 hour spurts, measuring something, then turning the traffic back off. Almost to the minute, the traffic flow stays on for 24 hours. (Seen by looking at referral data)
- When site Opened - Traffic flowed as expected for several weeks.
- In late Oct, Google stopped sending search traffic. Literally, none. I could not even find the "unique site name" in results.
- 1 week later, Google referrals were back on, for 24-48 hours, then turned back off.
- Site:command.com always shows the full site well indexed.
This same trend of "On again, Off again" has continued approximately every 4-7 days since late Oct. Traffic is all or nothing...
- When site is ON, "Unique Site Name" ranks on top.
- When site is OFF, "Unique Site Name" not in the top 1000 serps.
- Google images never stops using my images, and I still see image referrals daily.
What have I checked into... and hope to get more insight on.
- Speed. I have minimized all site files and got the site down to -180k, including all external script calls, images, html, css, etc. Yslow grades at a B-85, external tools show it loads in 1.9 seconds. WMT's, shows it at 2.5 secs, faster than 58% of the web on last check.
- Over-Optimization. It is what it is, and just due to the nature of the content, some of the 2-word phrases on the site are more than 12% saturation. I realize frequency is very outdated, but I checked it to see if it may be too high and cause some kind of OOP.
- Fear of Making Changes. I have considered that making changes to the site when the traffic is off, is triggering some kind of toolbar review trigger (page size changing on repeat visits) so I stopped making any changes in Nov. Goog has revisited twice since the last change, sent traffic for 24 hours, then turned it back off.
- Authority backlinks. I FEAR going off the map and building an un-natural link profile on the site. Catch-22 right?
Your opinions welcome....
