I can never get ahead with Google

[jost]

Ive just about had it with google.

I own a portfolio of websites than get 3+ million users a month.

Ive worked my ass off for years, building my traffic, and I do not play SEO games at all, I focus on content.

My work pays off, and traffic steadily climbs.

And then it happens.... google cuts my search/referral traffic 30% out of the blue.

Google traffic has dropped 30% or so, again, in the last 30 days.

It seems every time I get ahead and breakout to new traffic highs, and my work starts to pay off via adsense, BAM, google cuts my traffic.

I cant tell you how many times this has happened to me in the last 3-5 years. Im sick of it.

Its like google has a trigger of some sort... OH OH.. this site is getting too much traffic from us, so we will slash it back again.... and again... and again.

F you google! Im working so hard to find other ways to monetize my sites now. I will escape your enslavement somehow. You always punish me for working hard and building my traffic.

WTF GOOGLE?!?!?!


Has anyone experienced this as well?
Im so angry and tired of this. I cant get ahead. I dont know why I even try anymore, google just whacks me down every time I get ahead a little.

[Frost_Angel]

I could have written this post and feel your pain. My morning mantra is "WTF GOOGLE".
Day after day....
And the worst part.... is seeing what sites are gaining traffic. It's like - could they BE more spamming, old, MFA?
I am seriously considering just taking adsense off my site and going with Adhitz. I know someone that did and they are doing really well with it.

[tedster]

This is the way SEO has always been, as far back as I can remember - Infoseek, AltaVista, you name it. Google went for a few years being a bit more stable (with the occasional Florida-style bump) and the feeling started to grow that we could use it like an application.

Well, that kind of manipulation wasn't so good for the end users - I understand that - so I'm not surprised that we're into a new era of "WTF?"

[netmeg]

Try getting ahead with the users. If you can convince them you're worth coming back to, you might not need Google so much.

[jmccormac]

Try getting ahead with the users. If you can convince them you're worth coming back to, you might not need Google so much.

Watch the other search engines work on that one.

Regards...jmcc

[garyr_h]

@netmeg easier said than done. If you are a small niche website that provides information, people will look at the page, get their information, and most likely won't return.

For example, say you have a website dedicated to "antique unique widgets." You have pages on how to fix the antique unique widgets, what the antique unique widgets are for, and other various information on these antique unique widgets.

Someone finally comes across a antique unique widget and searches G on how to fix it to make it work again. Once he fixes it, he has no reason to come back.

People would normally say start a blog, but there's only so much you can write about these antique unique widgets because there's no new information coming out about them. Plus, with all the funky duplicate content stuff going on, you probably don't want to say anything which might trip that filter on G (and you could simply highlight the pages for your users anyway).

In this instance, you aren't going to succeed without search engines but yet it's also the exact type of website that search engines love (and love to punish every blue moon).

[potentialgeek]

@jost:

I feel your pain, man!

I feel like taking a Sabbatical for five years and coming back when the dust settles.

It used to be you could wait a month for the dust to settle. Now it might take a year or five.

It's an incredible chilling effect what they've done in the last year. I rarely build new pages now and forget about new sites.

The Plex has been taken over by people like Wall Street Fat Cats who make the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.

[netmeg]

Nobody said it was going to be easy; if it were easy then everyone would be doing it. Wait - everyone is! But not everyone can do it well.

If people come to your site and have no reason to come back, that's not a failure of Google to deliver traffic (sorry), that's a failure of YOUR business model. Or a failure of focus, if your site isn't a business. As hard as we all work to get traffic, why the heck wouldn't we want to figure out a way to KEEP that traffic?

If you create a plan or a site or a business that depends on someone else sending you free traffic, your users coming once and then never having a reason to bookmark you or come back, well then, you got 99 problems and none of them are Google.

Don't get me wrong, you can make your site as much or as little as you want. But if you're only willing to go so far in what you offer, then your expectations should only go so far as to what you'll get out of it.

[backdraft7]

netmeg , the Google version of that is this: "If it were easy, then Google will make sure it doesn't work for ANYONE!". We were clicking alone just fine this spring, but suddenly BAM! Since last Monday is has been steadily downhill, everyday a little less. Now they've turned it "inside out" - I had four sales between midnight and 6 am, but ZERO sales between 6am and 6pm. Plenty of ZOMBIE traffic, but nobody is buying. SERPs look OK and I'm watching and tracking my top keywords on Analytics Real Time.
My question is what did they do to people to make them stop buying.
Could this all be due to the unseasonably warm weather in the US?

I have noticed that when clicking Google results, then target page is taking very long to load. Perhaps there is some Google tracking code that is currently broken (again). Results are jumping all over the map. WTF Google?

Oh, just an afterthought....Ok, if the organic results go to pot, then why are my Adwords Ad Campaigns not delivering buying customers? The whole GOOGLE system seems to be T.U.!

Blame it on warm weather or Google, the bottom line is that it seems to affecting us all in the same very negative manner. Prices keep rising and Google seem hell bent on ruining the last bastion of free enterprise remaining in the world.

[ErnestHemingway]

The amount of love this forum gives to Google and its co-workers is insane at time.

Google rolled out Venice update, which if you think 30% loss is enough and hurting your business then wait till you lose it 100%. Venice will shake that attitude of yours into pieces. But it will give better user experience according to Google and add Google+ to it all a great recipe for webmasters to find something else to do.

I am shocked nobody at WebmasterForum cares about Venice update. Ridiculous how Google is getting away with all their changes by keeping people busy with Panda and Google+ BS.

And I can understand your PAIN, FRUSTRATION, ANGER but nothing will happen. If you give that BS on this forum most people will give you their THEORY of how Google is the best thing on earth and how they have been evolving since the very first day.

At least they weren't killing webmasters revenue that seriously/significantly until 2010. Past 2 years they been on attack.

So please don't whine but rather find other means of traffic and stop wasting time with Adsense.

[aakk9999]

My question is what did they do to people to make them stop buying.

Don't think Google's power stretches that far...

[netmeg]

My question is what did they do to people to make them stop buying.

Oh, just an afterthought....Ok, if the organic results go to pot, then why are my Adwords Ad Campaigns not delivering buying customers? The whole GOOGLE system seems to be T.U.!

The sad thing is, I think you might be asking that seriously.

[tedster]

This is a tough love post. There's no doubt that SEO for Google has become challenging. The old "rules" no longer work. Google is chasing their users, and us webmasters are not their target audience.

If you want to succeed with Google organic traffic, there is a lot to study. If you thought the original PR patent was too complicated, then you are attempting a livelihood that is now way over your head. If you never paid attention to what Big Daddy was, and completely tuned out the details of Caffeine or phrase-based indexing, then by now you are probably quite lost.

The choice is simple: either work to understand and have a chance at success, or spin conspiracy ideas and complain that the old methods don't work well. In that case, you don't have much chance at all with an online business.

The following are fruitless ideas - they just waste your time and honestly, they bore serious SEOs to death:

1. Everything Google spokespeople say is spin and not worth understanding.
2. Google organic is all about maximizing ad income.
3. The small business has no chance to succeed - because Google hates small business.

Don't try to be codependent with Google. They're not buying into any of that anyway, so you will end up feeling like a jilted lover.

[CainIV]

Don't base your business on Google.

Case solved.

[Prasawet]

As I said before, Google take the monopoly on our web business and as long as he stay as only one player on the market we have to play by his (never cleared) rules.
Black Hat Seo could be our answer, I have a couple fellow webmasters with such business model and they are doing just fine...more better than expected.

[netmeg]

Not only is tedster spot on correct, he's a lot more polite than I am.

[backdraft7]

Don't base your business on Google.

In other words, don't have an online business.

I doubt anyone of us need to be preached to on the technical requirements of adjusting our sites to Google's changes. I'm a former systems engineer, and have followed their guidelines to the letter.
I disagree with the "love" that anyone gives to Google. It's nothing more than total bewilderment.

I've said before that Google doesn't "owe" us anything, but they do owe it to their country to not "fire" millions. (Reminds me of the evil Zorg in the movie The Fifth Element: "Fire One Million!".)

And, yes, the "how did Google change people" comment was sarcastic, but at the same time serious!

[netmeg]

Not many people here (nobody that I've seen recently) loves Google.

It's not a question of loving Google. It's a question of adapting to the world in which we live, and in which businesses operate. There's not a whole lot going on online that isn't also going on offline. Substitute your cable company for Google, or Wal*mart or Kroger, or Home Depot or any well known brand.

And as far as firing millions (apart from questioning the number) that doesn't work either, because when sites drop, other sites (and businesses) rise.

[mrguy]

Google is no longer the cute little search engine everybody loves.

They are the new evil empire and they are much worse than Microsoft ever was.

That said, I gave up on Google a long time ago. Sure, I can spend a good portion of my life as many on this forum do studying Google patents and such trying to stay ahead of them, or I can just build solid websites that people like to visit and enjoy my free time instead fretting about what Google is or is not going to do next. Quite simply, I don’t care what they do next. My life will go on with or without them.

I bought into their hype early on. I had Google hats, tshirts, dorky pins, you name it. I even relished being able to report spam sites to Google Guy AKA Matt Cutts via a PM on this forum. Well, that all changed when I started to see disturbing trends with what they were doing and their holier than thou egos really started to show through.

These days, I build sites for visitors or for what the customer wants it for. Believe it or not, there are businesses that don’t need their site to show up in Google and instead use it to service their customers.

Do my sites show up in Google, sure some do and some don’t. A few years back when I got into affiliate stuff I was able to create many websites and try different things and if they got burned, so be it. I learned an awful lot doing affiliate sites.

I no longer fret about what is next for Google because I already know it can’t be good for me any way. They have to turn a buck and all you have to do is look at the results page to see how they do it. Anybody who says they are not thinking about the bottom line for their search results are full of you know what. You don’t get to be a 500+ a share stock by not thinking about it.

Search is changing for sure, the big buzz word now is social and who knows what it will be in 5 years.

If you are solely in this business to game Google and earn a living as an online marketer, you have a very tough road ahead of you.