Google Traffic Behavior (Drops and recoveries)

[conando25]

Hey guys,

My site has been hit hard by Google updates several different times the past three years. My traffic from Google would drop unexpectedly (11,000 to 4,500 sessions or less in one day some times) then recover a couple weeks later only for it to happen again. The significant drops were 9/4/13 (increased back up 11/5/13), down 1/9/14 (back up 2/14/14), down 2/22/14 (up 4/5/14), down 4/19/14 (up 5/23/14), down 6/6/14 (up 9/17/14), and down 10/25/14 where it has slowly trailed downwards since. I've looked into Google algorithm updates but haven't been able to find any smoking gun(s). Has anyone else experienced this type of traffic behavior from Google or would have any insight into what's causing this?

Thanks, I appreciate your time.

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, conando25 and sorry for the late reply!

All of your date examples are quite far in the past (2 years or so). Is this still happening and what are the fluctuations at the moment?
Also, apart from looking into google updates, is there anything else you tried to do to try to figure out what is happening?

[niku_piku]

Your dates correspond to the Panda updates. I can attest to being a witness to the traffic changes on our sites, especially in 2014.

[conando25]

Thank you both for your replies. I apologize for the delay in response to your messages.

We have been quite caught up in research and fixing of SEO issues. In regards to traffic fluctuations now: for the last 18 months we have plateaued but have not returned to the traffic numbers we once had. It makes us think that we have been penalized in some way by Google. The site we run is a <snip> site called <snip> that features <snip> much like <snip> but far more clean. We think that Google may be penalizing our site for having too thin of content in some of our entries. However, there are many other <snip> sites such as that feature thin content but still receive a lot of traffic. These sites do feature a lot of template content though, which we have contemplated doing.

I don't want to break any site rules so I won't post a link to the site <snip> <snip> <snip> Again, our site is called <snip>, which you can Google. Thanks for your time, it's much appreciated.


Mod's note: Lots of forum rules broken here... Sorry for the edits, but we don't allow domain names or site names for the same reasons we don't allow links. No hints. No clues. We don't allow public site reviews for everybody's protection, and we don't allow public discussion of private information because that would leave out many members. Please read the Google Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com] for more details.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:29 pm (utc) on Nov 4, 2016]

[wondering]

The October 2014 update was most definitely Panda as our site recovered in that update. To the best of my knowledge, that was the last time Panda update was manually triggered. After that, based on who you listen to inside and outside Google, Panda has been incorporated into the core algorithm.
Our site suffered many declines following the October 2014 update. Mostly in early summer 2015 as a part of the Phantom update. And then it continued to bleed traffic all year 2016 and at this point we are almost at the same level where we were in 2014 after being hit by Panda.