Google Traffic Dropped over 60%, Nov 17th 2010

[alorentz]

We are a leading publisher of how-to marketing information with over 380,000 subscribers, and approx. 1mil pageviews/month. Our site is content rich, SEO'd, we have hundreds of thousands of back links and we've been very well indexed for years (new pages are usually indexed within 15 min). Businessweek, and some others, actually solicit membership for our content.

On Nov. 17th 2010 our Google site traffic dropped by over 60% and has not rebounded.

I've also noticed that our indexed pages, including home page, have fallen farther back in search results dramatically (typically fixed to top position on page #2 in results, if listed at all) for some of the regular searches I do to check results. I've seen some opinions on the possible causes, ranging from Holiday SERPs, Google Preview/Instant, other algorithm changes, etc., however, these are all guesses. I don't believe we are violating any Google policies.

A couple of things I've noticed:

1. Our content is scraped daily, either in full format or excerpt, and these feed-based sites are ranking better than us, the source, only after Nov 17th. We normally ranked #1 for our content, however, something changed, and we are now often demoted to page 2 or not shown at all, despite being the source.

Our content still gets indexed within a few minutes of publishing, however, searches for our exact content titles show sites that are pulling our feeds or scraping our content, instead of showing us.

We used to be listed #1 for content title searches, or anything closely related, and now we are farther back in search results if at all, superseded by feed based sites. And all our keyword searches have dropped, along with traffic.

Some searches result in the Google message "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

Scraper sites are listed for this content, and they scraped it from our site in full. If you click the "show more" link it then shows our site. This also leads me to believe that Google has lowered the rank of our site pages, for some reason, as we are now thought of as the duplicate site.

Many, many sites illegally scrape our content, and we can't track them all down. Most of these sites are completely bogus and just used for Adsense or advertising purposes.

How in the world does this happen? How can't Google determine source site and site quality. Site that are ranking are simply scraped/feed-based sites, and we've been a top online marketing publisher for over 10 years.

I sought feedback on Google Webmaster Forums, but am hoping to get additional input here.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

[pageoneresults]

I realize it's hard to say how effective the Site Review section is, but what should I expect there?

You should expect a few of us who are following this topic publicly to come back and see what's going on. I know I'd be interested to take a look and so would others.

I'm already pretty informed with SEO best practices, so the general "make sure there's no duplicate content" or "have you analyzed GWT data" suggestions don't really help. Our site is SEO'd well, but there's something more to this problem.

How do you know that? How many other eyes have looked at the SEO stuff? I wouldn't be so quick to say that you've got everything covered from that perspective. Do all the pages validate? Can you extract a semantic outline from the pages? How fast do they load? Yada, yada, yada.

I'd be willing to bet that there is a technical issue somewhere that has been overlooked. There's a strong chance that a "Review My Site" will reveal things you've either overlooked or didn't even think about.

[alorentz]

Happy to give it a shot! I wasn't suggesting there's nothing wrong technically, just that GWF review wasn't very fruitful.

Stay tuned, will post in Site Review shortly.

Thanks.

[pageoneresults]

Careful, there are some stipulations...

Review Two Other Sites before Posting your own.

[alorentz]

Question. Should I block Google News? I don't now, but they pull our content in as soon as it is published, and many site use them as feeds for there own WordPress site, pushing our content titles and excerpt out to everyone who wants it, at the same time it's published to our site.

Normally, you would think the backlinks would help us, but we have hundreds of thousands of backlinks now, and they don't seem to be improving our rank over these feed sites.

[tedster]

Getting into Google News is a kind of "badge of honor" and recently they have been tightening up on their requirements. If you want to be removed, I'd suggest you first take a good look at what traffic you are currently getting.

[alorentz]

I don't necessarily "want" to be removed, rather, if all these feeder sites are a problem for us ... would removing the feed be reasonable. Have you heard other situation like this?

Like I said, normally syndicating our content would be great. However, there a chance this is now back firing, and the sites that pull our content are now better ranked. Also as mentioned, there's more to it than this, but maybe all the little things are just contributing to the problem.

Not sure.

[Planet13]

Can I ask if, for the benefit of the group, whether you have done any back link analysis on the sites that are scraping your content and out ranking you? (I understand you said there were many sites).

And are they on new domain names? Or did they purchase domains with a history?

And i am assuming that these sites have been scraping your content for a long time now, but it was just on the 17th of November that they really started to outrank you? Or did they just start scraping your content then?

[Planet13]

Also the other interesting parallel is that Adsense is supposed to be much more strict as to what sites they will let post ads. While I know this is not an SEO issue, many people have said that it has been increasingly harder for thin affiliate sites to keep their adsense accounts.

With the descriptions that the Original Poster (alorentz) has given us is that those sites are completely free of any original content, and are not only getting past google's spam filters for the SERPs, but also getting past the appropriate Adsense filters, too.

[Planet13]

I started re-reading this thread from the beginning, and had a question or two.

Just for clarification, can I ask this:

...we do reference other sites regularly, as well as publish original content. All content is written by our paid authors, even when referencing other sites.

I am not making judgments here, but when you say "reference other sites," can we assume that some people might consider the content written by your paid authors to be "spun" from those referenced sites?

Would it be fair to say that much of the content generated by your authors is strongly based upon already existing content?

Again, not trying to pass judgment. Just trying to get a clearer picture of the situation.

[alorentz]

Update from Matt Cutts - [googleblog.blogspot.com...] (hope I haven't broken rules by posting this).

With that, if our site has been incorrectly flagged as SPAM or a content farm (which we are not), this would imply things are only going to get worse.

[alorentz]

Whoops, here it is: [googleblog.blogspot.com...]

[linkbuildr]

Are you making use of those two new original content source meta tags Google has provided?

[alorentz]

Yes, but google has said they are in beta now, and not impacting rank. Good to have though, regardless.

[Planet13]

And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.

If this is true, then mustn't we assume that the Original Poster's web site is under some sort of penalty? Otherwise, how could sites that have stolen his content outright be out ranking him?

[alorentz]

I initially thought we were under some sort of penalty, but we never received any notification in GWT, and we're not violating any policies. Who know though, it's an automated algo, and we could just be another unlucky company to get impacted.

Not to say nothing is wrong on our end, I just can't find it yet.

[Planet13]

I know you are well aware of your back link profile, but is there a possibility that those same sites that are scraping you have posted spammy links back to your site in order to devalue / penalize your site? Are there any links you can see from blatant #*$!, gambling, medication sites that could be pointing to your site?

Also, have any members from the support forum offered any suggestions?

[alorentz]

"posted spammy links back to your site in order to devalue / penalize your site"

Not that I have found.

I haven't been able to post to the private support forum here, as my membership payment has not been processed by WebmasterWorld yet.

[jimbeetle]

If you can expand on this as Planet13 asked above it could help in our understanding of your site:

...we do reference other sites regularly, as well as publish original content. All content is written by our paid authors, even when referencing other sites.

[alorentz]

In a nutshell, we publish how-to marketing information: original articles, boiled downed versions of other content, market research/analysis, etc. An example of referencing other content would be in our charts, in which our editor search for new research online, and then post analysis or summaries of the research for our members, often including excerpts from the original source. We link back to original sources of the data in all content. As mentioned, we also publish an article every day that is totally original content from our authors, plus online seminars, events, conferences, etc.

Related to referencing other sites, perhaps there is a possibility this type of referencing could make us look like a duplicate content site. This has never been a problem before, however, recent algo changes could now be flagging this content inadvertently.

On top of that, with all the site pulling our feeds and scraping content, I can imagine this could also make it look like we are the duplicate site, even when those sites link back to us. Feeds link back through feedburner, but scrapers don't link back most of the time. To try to counter this issue, I have delayed new content fro being included in our feeds until 2 days after it;s published, to ensure Google finds it on our site first. Kinda defeats the purpose of RSS, delaying content 2 days, but I'm trying to eliminate all possibilites.

[edited by: tedster at 1:11 am (utc) on Jan 22, 2011]

[alorentz]

Hi all, I have continued this question in the WW Supporters Review My Site section. Thanks for your time and consideration!

[Planet13]

Hi all, I have continued this question in the WW Supporters Review My Site section.

Please let us know of any interesting suggestions / remedies you receive that you wouldn't mind sharing in a public forum like this.

I really think your experience could be a big help to other webmasters.

[alorentz]

Not getting much feedback in private forum so far, but will be sure to update here if I get any possible solutions.

[Prasawet]

"Yahoo and Bing had a seasonal dig Nov-Dec., but nothing out of the ordinary, and both of these SEs are actually driving more traffic day by days now (likely a result of our newsletter frequency change). Good, none the less."

Must say, in my case, this is evident. I have site with 600 pages and in Nov/2010 did some improvements: eliminate duplicate titles, rearange meta descriptions (now everyone of them have more then 160 chars), keywords are strictly in corelation with titles and descs, remove old 404 pages from G. cache, did 301 redirect for some problematic pages...etc.
Now, webmaster tools don't report any problem (maybe a couple pages wich are mysterously stay in G. cache) and my sitemap content is 90% indexed.
Result: Google drop 80% and Yahoo and Bing raise 300%!
Yahoo is now what was Google before Nov and have tendency of raise.

[Planet13]

Not getting much feedback in private forum so far, but will be sure to update here if I get any possible solutions.

I am sorry to hear that. Thank you for letting us know because it might help us all make a more informed decision about joining the paid membership.

[pageoneresults]

Heh, I've been raking the poor guy over the coals back there. I'm sure he'll make an appearance here shortly. :)

To summarize, it could be an issue with a First Click Free implementation that was removed in the latter part of December I believe. Crawl activity shows a recovery in progress. Only time will tell. I'll let the OP expand further. Remember, we're just taking educated guesses at the moment but all signs point in the FCF direction.

[Planet13]

Thanks for the update, pageoneresults

[Planet13]

@alorentz

Has there been any update to the situation?

would love to know if the Original Poster got his rankings back, and what it took to do so.

[alorentz]

@planet13 - we have not seen any changes in rankings since the drop. I was hopeful that the Jan 26-27th update to filter our duplicate sites would help, but I have not seen any change to SERPs for our content. Giving it some more time though.

[Planet13]

...but I have not seen any change to SERPs for our content...

so it is the exact same sites AND the exact same URLs from those sites that are ranking above you?

Or are there different URLs from the same sites?

[Jane_Doe]

searches for our exact content titles show sites that are pulling our feeds or scraping our content, instead of showing us.

The other sites ranking higher may be a symptom of another problem with your site, not the cause. If your site has a spam penalty, the other sites will rank higher simply because the spam penalty points push your site lower in the rankings.