Search traffic drop from 62K to 19K in 6 months

[mamiakimo]

hi,

i get many hits in last 6 months dropped my site from 62K to 19K

<snip>

first one in 11 nov 2012
second one in 22 nov
1 dec
24 dec
11 jan
1 feb
15 march
8 may

my site is a forum working from 2004 using XenForo and all threads are unique
i bought a site and merged it with my site in sep 2012 ( this site used black hate )
can i recover from google panda now ?
i
.

Mod's note: Removed image link, which contains inappropriate advertising. Graph shows an abrupt drop in November, followed by a steady sloping decline.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:29 am (utc) on May 13, 2013]

[tedster]

Hello mamiakimo, and welcome to the forums.

This kind of month-by-month decline is pretty common these days, but from your dates and the record we have of Panda updates (see [webmasterworld.com...] ), it doesn't really look like you are suffering from Panda but other kinds of algorithm changes. There's a lot of this going around, too - and it can be pretty hard to diagnose and fix.

I hope our forum discussions here can help focus you on many possibilities. We have members who have long experience. Though SEO has become much different these days, with a much stronger focus on user experience, we haven't given up at allon imprvoing our lost rankings - at least not most of us ;)

[Pjman]

I think tedster did offer you some quality advice. In that:

a. It's most likely not Panada.

b. It most likely revolves around the user experience.

Look at who is ranking now, is there experience better? Compare link profiles.

What signals is Google seeing in them, that is lacking in you?

[mamiakimo]

my strong keywords moved from page #1 to #17 or more

[netmeg]

It's not enough to just follow the rules anymore; you have to somehow show that you're better than everyone else.

[dethfire]

My science forum also has seen each month since Dec 2012 trend lower and lower.

[tantalus]

bought a site and merged it with my site in sep 2012 ( this site used black hate )

How exactly did you merge this site (and what kinda site is this?) with your forum?

Are you 301ing for example?

[Yogesh Sarkar]

When did you switch to Xenforo? Maybe it is the URL change which is causing your forum threads to get deindexed from Google?

[Webinacube]

Hi,

"mamiakimo" drop in ranking is from after merging the new website to your forum?

[mamiakimo]

How exactly did you merge this site (and what kinda site is this?) with your forum?

Are you 301ing for example?

using 301 redirect
the problem happen after 3 months from merge so i thins his outside links damage me

When did you switch to Xenforo? Maybe it is the URL change which is causing your forum threads to get deindexed from Google?

switched from 9/2011
i am a php programming so i have not mistake in my redirect

Hi,

"mamiakimo" drop in ranking is from after merging the new website to your forum?

after 3 months
my site have 15K and his site have 65K visitor per day
after merge i get about 76K per day and after 3 months my keywords begin move from #1 page to #17 and more

[hitchhiker]

@mamiakimo - sorry to hear about your plight :( Until we get some official guidelines from Google relating directly to this specific UGC/forum hit (around nov 12) nothing we can say is guaranteed to help.

In all the responses I've got on this subject from webmasters, none speak of a real recovery from it. Traffic seemed to decline since then.

It has (based on our naturally restricted viewpoint) hit somewhat randomly. It didn't seem to favour one forum over any other for any specific reason. Though it could have hit us all 'equally', impossible to say without having Google's data on this.

It's also got messed up and tangled with the Panda updates, but most of the people I spoke to benefitted from Panda.

I'm working to get some more meaningful dialogue (in general) from Google. I'm nobody special, but I'm going to try. Wish me luck.

Cheers,
Frank.

[StoutFiles]

The majority of old sites are being punished, because in theory, people want to go to newer sites and Google tries to reflect that in the search engines. A lot of the drop is likely your older pages are being removed, while your newer pages are being outranked by competing larger sites.

It's not rocket science people!

[hitchhiker]

"people want to go to newer sites"

• People want to go to useful sites.
  
• People want quality: long standing and newer sites provide that.
  
• Do you think they care / or know / when a site was founded.
  
• When was the last time you closed a site, because you looked up in the registrar when it was founded and then said 'no, this site was founded 15 years ago, i must leave immediately'
  
• Old non-ugc sites (as we demonstrated in another thread) are unaffected.

[mamiakimo]

@hitchhiker
I wish you success

[hitchhiker]

@mamiakimo - thanks man, you too.

Hopefully we'll get an answer, there are tons of us waiting to hear about this. Don't fret good sir! Keep your focus on content and fix any mistakes you made - it's all we can do.

[mamiakimo]

i am really not happy for that because my adsense revenue dropped from 160$ per day to 40$

[Naveenn]

mamiakimo, I have been facing this from past 2+ years now, since the panda launch, the site has been hit by almost any algo update.

Since the death fall, The site has been considerably improved, redesigned, more quality content added etc etc. Nothing helps! The problem might not be with your site, it can be a case of other sites being ranked better on new algos.

My site once had a consistent traffic of more than 40k daily visitors, now it hardly receives 3K visitors.

Quality search results from past are now replaced with Youtube, wikipedia, google listings and other already big sites with thin content or listing.

The fun is over.

[Bojangles]

In December - January 2012-2013 my site peaked reaching 50k a day.

Now I'm lucky to reach 17k.

I'm not sure what caused this issue exactly...I haven't changed much on the site. I'm down about 40% from years past. I've got to do something.

[GodLikeLotus]

StoutFiles - It's not rocket science people!

Strange phrase to use when talking about Google traffic and rankings

Naveenn - Quality search results from past are now replaced with Youtube, wikipedia, google listings and other already big sites with thin content or listing.

The sad reality

[mamiakimo]

i have another forum i bought it in sep 2012 with 14K daily visitors and upgrade it from vbulletin 3 to XenForo also like my site

this site get increase in visitors from jan 2013 month after month
now it have 48K daily visitors

the joke here, i can't use adsense in this site because it have illegal contents

so i don't think google punished all forums, some get hit, others get high order

i using same theme with color change in this both forums and same plugins
and both in same server, same ip address, using same DNS with same domain contact informations

[StoutFiles]

People want to go to useful sites.

Agreed. Forum content from 8 years ago is useful only in rare cases.

I'm saying his old content is being removed or just buried, Google likes to put recent things on to the top of their index.

It doesn't matter how old the site is, only how old the page's content is. Only an exact match is going to pull it up on Google these days.

[mamiakimo]

i think we don't talk here about changing in google but a penalty for our site
because here i move my side to another subdomain using 301 redirect i get all my past keyword return to first page

please see my post here
[webmasterworld.com...]

so we talk about penalty like panda or something

[hitchhiker]

@StoutFiles
"Agreed. Forum content from 8 years ago is useful only in rare cases."

Speak to the 10,000+ webmasters who have totally non-aging subjects (like English Language studies).

These sort of careless generalisations simply don't help, or match the information that's out there. Within most subjects there's age-dependant and ageless content. Even in the most modern ones like 'tech'.

I could point to any healthy site (that's not failing), ask why it is failing - there'd be 10 good reasons.

Either way, I don't know either. But I've told him what I've found out so far about an issue that may have affected his site - based on 2 weeks of questions and feedback and 8 months of experiencing it.

I'm down 60k a day, but my site is still 120k a day. My results are replaced with sites almost identical to mine (mostly old more traditional forum formatting actually). Most of us would like to think we know what we're doing.

[StoutFiles]

These sort of careless generalisations simply don't help, or match the information that's out there. Within most subjects there's age-dependant and ageless content. Even in the most modern ones like 'tech'.

I don't know why you're angry at me, I'm just the messenger. I'm trying to tell you what Google's doing. They are favoring new content and large sites over old content and small sites. They have been doing this for quite some time. I thought everyone knew this already.

As for the OP's problem, large shakeups usually have you drop in the serps. Google's algorithm favors consistency.

[hitchhiker]

You're right of course- sorry I am indeed being snappy - I've been on the google product forums fighting a losing battle for 2 weeks.

Sorry again man, my bad :(

[netmeg]

Hopefully we'll get an answer, there are tons of us waiting to hear about this.

Ok you're not likely to get an "answer" - very few ever do, and I wouldn't wait for it too long before making some decisions.

[hitchhiker]

@netmeg we already got two answers on this from John Mueller (though the answers are broad), the link is in another thread.

But yes, it's wise to act. Perhaps be careful about some of the suggestions you might read about. Just remember NONE of us here know anything other than our limited observations and speculation.

I've heard some 'experts' in the G. Product Forums give some spectacularly dangerous advice. Be careful!

I'm personally still following the formula of 'content is king' even though that's not necessarily 'in action' currently. I've also corrected a few 'basic' things, like de-indexing some profile pages, some of the navigation hub pages, and some tag pages. (On Mueller's / and a few of the better G.P.F folks advice)

[netmeg]

As far as things to do - I wasn't advocating making big changes to the site, just maybe making changes to your business plan - i.e. find other sources of traffic, other monetization options, etc.