June 27th: Site dropped like a rock in stormy weather August 15th: Site back again September 15th: Site gone once more November 15th: Site back to "normal", maybe a bit more visitors than before June 27th.... Someone mentioned SEO and I agree with the post. No need to do SEO since it is not a "law" and will change every time Google flips a switch to either update something, remove something or maybe just check some changes in their algo. To me it seems that Google wants us to create certain type of web sites, and if you don't fit within their ideas of a web site, then you aren't worth anything. You can't just create any web site and hope that you'll be on first page in SERP's anymore. You need to have (according to Google) unique content and it seems to have to be created with wikki tools. If it is not an "information" site then Google doesn't like you. Blogs were good for a while, but when they got hammered with comment spam, then Google decided that Blogs are not good. Link directories were good, but when sites linked to "bad" sites, then directories were not good so they penalized you. Affiliate sites were good, but if you don't have your "own" content also then you're a bad boy so Google won't list you........ With all these "filters" and then some, it is no wonder that spam sites show up in SERP's because they are "new" and "disposable" and the filters have not kicked in yet.
The only problem here Mike is that a few of us can get sites to rank no matter how constructed. Notice everything you mentioned has been abused in one way or the other...articles soon are going to have no value due to article spam.. What works and continues to work in doing things naturally and over the course of time... Everyone wants to be on Googles front pages now but few will invest the time needed to get there. Seems many forget it takes almost 5 years to build a business offline into making a profit yet turn to the internet and everyone wants to be an overnight success. "That overnight success you heard about... was actually 8 years in the making"
If you have a good site, done "naturally" you can be sure that one day it will be scraped and abused in some way and will be removed/penalized by Google. I had a site with totally unique content, great position in Google. Scrapers found the site and now you can find copied content all over the place, but my site is gone from Google. I agree that article sites are a thing of th past. I don't even think that links from article sites are counted for in Google. Somehow I think Google needs to go away from counting inbound links at all. I know that the sites I compete with are not interested in placing links to my site. Most people are no interested in linking either since they'll compete with themselves. Buying links? Can't do that! Link directories? Don't think Google like them and disregard links. I have found a lot of links with rel=nofollow on scraper sites but they don't count either. Not sure anymore where good links would come from?!
also saw a big drop bout a month ago after a nice climb for multiple key words, hmmmm hoping to get them back as I've done nothing to warrant the drop...
It wasn't the pay per click or CPM that became a Macdonalds salary, it was a 70% drop in google search traffic. Nothing "smart" there. I like "smart pricing" though, it gives me good payouts. In my case, traffic came from lots and lots of different searches, it's like some kind of filter hit the site and any search no longer brings it up in results, I don't target any particular set of keywords. Good point, and I agree with you, but it doesn't always work that way. In this case the building up was done over a period of years (about 7 now) and everything worked well up until this year, 2006, the year of the data pushes and caos and dropping to 10% and 20% google traffic levels. Google has a huge responsibility since they monopolize search and control the fates of many people earning money online (especially adsense content publishers) and they could be a little more careful or a little more subtle when making changes. Although, I imagine managing billions of webpages in search results must be a hell of a task. Not much choice but to keep working, stop complaining (this goes for me) get the lost income back and much more.
Mike I think links are going to come from sites where they are very relevant only. Sorry to hear of your traffic loss. 70% hurts like hell. However Google does not have a responsibility to anyone on the free results side. They do not twist anyones arm to try to market this way. The offering is free and at an huge expense to Google. Granted they need the pages to run ads but they dont owe anyone a free ride so to speak. If you let me have a look at your site maybe I can see some issues that are hurting you now.
Semi-advance, thanks i'll pm it to you. I think a search engine ..is precisely that "search" ..a place people go to search for webpages, if google stopped listing web sites and became just a 'ppc engine' then people would eventually stop using google and go to other search engines because I think people want real listings, not just adverts. So I see it as not exactly a freebie thing from google, they need us as much as we need them, or whoever replaces them as the free search king. But you're right as you say they make no guarantees nor have any obligation to send traffic to anyone. Well well, thankfully (after 1 and half month of 20% of normal G traffic).. I checked my traffic this morning and it seems to be closely on target to returning to normal. So it's quite similar to what happened to Mike Sweed, dropped twice and came back twice since June 26th. I was so pleased this morning that I took out and put to use the little pen drive Google set me with that little kit they sent to publishers last christmas (not sure if it was for publishing or advertising)
I just lost quite a bit of pages on google today.. I had something like 65 pages (I'm a noob), and now it's only one. What the heck is going on!
Something interesting is that my actual traffic has increased drastically, but my adsense revenue has dropped
The number of indexed pages of most of my bigger sites have dropped to about 40% of what they had previously in the last few days. .... Traffic dropped like crazy too. Hope it comes back.
My site was getting great traffic and clicks since then tanked a few days ago. Hopefully, they get it straightened out. Oh yeah, and some PR would be nice. Merry X-Mas to me.