Huge site traffic gone in just 4 days

[experienced]

One of my website were getting appx 7k unique user a day and in just 4 days it is reduced to 700 user a day. all of my top rankings are gone. we regularly update the website with fresh content as it is the site requirement. we use web photos and wallpapers with the courtesy link or name and use disclaimer as well.

my site name is very unique and now even if i put my name in google, it does not say my site is there. and showing only social media account on my name and all..

i had been having some huge bandwidth usage issue in this month like my site use almost 8Gb a day but for some days it went to 30GB a day with hardly any effect on the visitor side.

can anybody help us finding the issues..

help appreciated.

[danimalSK]

either you've:

- robots.txt blocked *
- noindexed every page
- been penalized

the latter is what I'd place my bets on. if you've been penalized I'd suggest you post your site on [google.com...]

[Pjman]

Might also be an indexing error on the part of google. That happened to me for 6 days back in November. The in came back to normal. I would catch danimalSK's thoughts and if you find nothing, give it a week. Then it would be time for more in depth analysis.

[danimalSK]

actually even if you robots.txt blocked the home page, chances are Google would still index and rank it, so that's probably not the problem.

[lets_learn]

Anything unusual in WMT? Malware or some notice?

[chrisv1963]

we use web photos and wallpapers with the courtesy link or name and use disclaimer as well

Are you using these photos without asking the owner's permission first? Even with a courtesy link or disclaimer it still is a copyright violation. Maybe you got hit by a DMCA?

[asabbia]

7k daily isn't huge

[crobb305]

7k daily isn't huge

The OP may have meant "huge amount" lost (90% is huge).

One of my website were getting appx 7k unique user a day and in just 4 days it is reduced to 700 user a day.

Are you saying this happened in the past 4 days, or over a 4 day period? What date exactly did the traffic drop by 90%?

When searching for your site name, I know you said you don't see it listed at the top, but do you find it deeper down (say page 5 or beyond)?

[Leosghost]

we use web photos and wallpapers with the courtesy link or name and use disclaimer as well.

Sure sounds like what chrisv1963 said ..using other peoples copyright images without permission ( Disclosure.. I make original images..they get ripped off just like this by people who can't be bothered to make a real site with their own created content..even with anti hot link in place, some just screencap ) sounds like either DMCA or exactly what Panda was supposed to catch ..

Good thing too if that is the case ..you may well have some images of mine ..and a "courtesy link"* or a name or a disclaimer ..doesn't excuse what you are doing at all.

*sounds like "I took this from here ..without permission ..but it's OK in my mind because I told you where I got it" ..sheesh !

probably running ads(ense) on it aswell..

[experienced]

thanks for the lot of inputs,

1 - photos and wallpapers are not ours but we are using custesy link but true, they might be caught in dmca.

2 - robot and noindex issue is not there.

3 - WMT got me some carwling issues for the deep urls that i dont think may lead to this much big problem, and we have corrected them.

4 - yes we run adsense.

I WILL TRY REMOVING THE ADSENSE FROM THE WEBSITE FOR COUPLE OF DAYS. BECAUSE I KNOW WHEN THE SITE HAS ADS, GOOGLE ACT VERY FAST ON THE ANY RIGHT OR WRONG COMPLAINTS.

[Shaddows]

Please note that a lot of the more well-informed members have been noting that duplicated content (REGARDLESS OF WHO PUBLISHED FIRST) has been causing Panda-related losses.

A lot of the more proactive members have noted that Original publishers protect their content via DMCA.

Thus, I expect a LOT of "curated", "collated", "republished", "aggregated" or otherwise externally-sourced sites are going to find themselves facing a "google penalty" which is in fact just copyright laws catching up with you.

I WILL TRY REMOVING THE ADSENSE

To be honest, I think the issue is with the input (where content comes from), not the monetisation of such

[asabbia]

A lot of the more proactive members have noted that Original publishers protect their content via DMCA.

how can i protect my original content with DMCA?