Google filter lifted, but traffic stays the same

[Prudence]

Hi everyone. A Google filter on one of my websites was lifted yesterday (after two years) and the home page is back in the top 10 for its main keyword. The site is currently at 7th. However, I'm rather surprised to see that my traffic remains about the same as it did when it lay in the 40s and 50s.

I was at 7th before the Google filter was put in place and traffic was never this bad. Am I being a tad impatient about this. I've done a Google data centre search and all the results point to the site being at 7th.

[Prudence]

Some advice would be very much appreciated, many thanks.

[indyank]

Prudence, I too have some strange examples of what you see.I have also seen traffic to pages which doesn't seem to exist anywhere.

Google seem to be into throttling in a big way.

I've done a Google data centre search and all the results point to the site being at 7th.

Is IP address also playing a big role these days?

[Planet13]

Prudence:

Do you mind if I ask what you did to get filtered in the first place?

[Prudence]

Thanks indyank. Who knows what plays a big role these days! It seems things have changed quite a bit in the last two years in terms of traffic volume, certainly for my niche.

It's a very popular keyword too, I was amazed when I saw how little the traffic had increased after the site's recovery.

[scooterdude]

Organic 7th ain't what it used to be,

With all the other new type/format info ahead of your organic 7th position , 7th might be,,,, equal to 11th old style

[Prudence]

Thanks Planet13. It looks like it MIGHT have been a backlink penalty :) Over half of the site's incoming links pointed to the site's prime keyword in their anchor text. I spent the last six months acquiring links with different anchor text and then all of a sudden the site reappeared.

[Prudence]

Thanks scooterdude. That's a sobering thought. My main keyphrase doesn't have the new info you refer to thankfully but there are heavy duty competitors now in the top 5. That can't be helping either I suppose.

[robert76]

Are you sure that your google personalization settings were not changed, therefore, causing you to now see it but not others?

[Planet13]

Are you sure that your google personalization settings were not changed, therefore, causing you to now see it but not others?

I would definitely look into this as well. Personalization seems to have a pretty big effect on my rankings as well, so if possible, try and have some other people in different parts of the country look at the rankings.

Have you also checked in the google adwords search suggestion tool whether the volume of searches is the same or more than it used to be before you got the penalty.

~~~~~~~~

Oh, and one more follow up, if you don't mind, since I am in the middle of a link building campaign for one of my sites. Do you mind if I ask you HOW aggressive you were with your previous link building that you think gt you in hot water?

Were you buying links / doing Xrumer blasts? Or were you manually requesting links but just using the same keywords in your anchor text?

I don't want you to incur the wrath of those people on this board who would say, "I told you so." But I do think it would be a benefit for all of us who are trying to build links without getting dinged.

(And also, I ask because for a two-word keyword phrase that I am trying to rank for, I see LOTS of sites in the top ten that do articles / reciprocal link exchanges, etc, and they all have the same exact keywords in them, and THEY don't seem to be harmed.)

[Prudence]

Are you sure that your google personalization settings were not changed, therefore, causing you to now see it but not others?

Thanks Robert76. It seems I'm seventh accross the board, had some friends and family check for me.

Have you also checked in the google adwords search suggestion tool whether the volume of searches is the same or more than it used to be before you got the penalty.

Planet 13, search volume is pretty much the same. However, traffic has improved again, so maybe improvements will be incremental? I do notice however that many of the internal pages are still nowhere to be seen.

To answer your question regarding link building, I only have around 250 links so I haven't been that agressive. I've also never bought links, I just manually send emails out one by one asking for links back with the same anchor text.

The anchor text in question was ALSO my keyword domain name. So I never thought this would be a problem! I thought it would be ok to have a link back to my company name. Maybe this is what added to the site's downfall.

[Planet13]

To answer your question regarding link building, I only have around 250 links so I haven't been that aggressive. I've also never bought links, I just manually send emails out one by one asking for links back with the same anchor text.

gulp...

Well, I HOPE that wasn't what brought upon your downfall, because requesting backlinks by email is certainly the main focus of my link building campaign...

Also, that would certainly mean that most sites would be vulnerable to google bowling.

Again, it seems odd if that was the cause, because the top sites in the keywords I am tracking are doing WAY MORE SPAMMY things than asking for a link back in an email (e.g., mass directory submissions, paid links, link exchanges with off-topic sites, keyword-stuffed anchor text in back links, etc.,).

One more thing: Are you able to look at your traffic on an hourly basis throughout the day? Does there seem to be any pattern of throttling? Maybe that the traffic faucet is turned on for a few hours, then turned off, then turned on?

Have you read through the various threads on traffic throttling on this forum?

Are your friends and family seeing the same TITLE and description in the SERPs? I know google has been increasingly experimenting with the titles and descriptions that are being shown in the results, and could it be possible that it has SOME effect on the results?

How are your time on site and bounce rate metrics? Is there anything suspicious there?

And are you absolutely sure that you don't have a technical issue that could cause this? (For instance, I accidentally put a noindex metatag on my HOME PAGE a few months back, and it took about six weeks to discover that. Oddly enough, it was the INTERNAL pages, and NOT the home page, that seemed to suffer the most.)