Same problem. BUT...... after 1 week (of trying to figure out what went wrong)... I got a heartbeat. Still doing more investigating....
Same situation here for a site, in the same time frame. I went from 5k uniques per day + to 0 overnight. I believe we both got screwed in a G shuffle of the algo. It sucks man.
I don't think you can do anything to change it. I believe that we can only hope for a correction soon.
Honestly I've been looking into the problem for a week now and have dedicated at least 20+ hours into just trying to see what exactly changed. It doesn't look like things are going back. Adapt or be screwed. I think there might be some sort of additional tweak to this "major algo change" but I don't think the people that lost their rankings are getting them back by just 'waiting it out'. I hope I'm wrong. I gave it 1+ month... nothing. Was time to get down and dirty and not wait any longer.
I don't think its a penalty You probably lost the top positions for your major keywords (did you check your stats ?) which means that your competitors did a better job SEOing (links) the site while you were just relaxing enjoying your top positions updating content (as already mentioned) helps google consider your content fresh (duh !!!)
At first I thought it was a penalty cause waiting 1+ month and not getting ANYTHING back was just absolutely frustrating me. I had a super important site get mixed up in this mess and no way could afford to just start that site over again due to the value of the domain name. It isn't a matter of "SEO" (In quotes)... it's a matter of change Pre-June and Post June. They changed something, but what it was I still haven't figured out. I'm dieing to know, but I can't really find any useful threads on the situation (I think there's some @ Webmaster World... but I'm not going to pay their club fee to get a login)... so I'm basically just staying up and trying to figure it out alone. Supposed to have a chat with one guy regarding the change either tonight or tomorrow at a Starbucks... so we'll see what else I can get out of that.
Most important change between "pre-June" and "post-June" may be tighter filters for overdoing SEO, especially related to internal linking.
to the OP and others, first if your site site is under let's say 9 months, this could be standard procedure for google listings. if it's over a year old, first check your domain name in google (i.e. type "mysite" or "mysite.com" into google) to see if that comes up. if it use come up and it no longer does or is ranked very low then you may have incurred some sort of penalty. if it does come up then you are probably not penalized. so run a link checker on your entire site like xenu link sleuth to make certain all your outgoing links are familiar to you (you can google that script, it's free!). second, if no unusual links come up, you have to make sure that you haven't been hacked. go over each of your files - especially if you use wordpress - and make certain there are no redirects, cloaking, spam, porn or other issues. i would also check your log files to see what google can see and also do a "site:mydomain.com" to see what's actually indexed. further, if you haven't already done so sign up for a google webmasters tool account, and that might shed some light. there are many other factors, but these are a few within your control. and if you do spot that you have been hacked once you've cleaned it up you can submit a reconsideration request to google via webmasters tool. what's out of your control is the google algorithm which may no longer like your site if you basically a carbon copy of another site. so ask yourself how unique a site are you?
First off, thanks for the great advice! site:wallpapervillage.com returns 23,700 results link:wallpapervillage.com is really down! only 320 links. Time to get to work. Yeah, I was hacked 3 times. I have submitted a reconsideration request. Thanks a lot for your very helpful advice! Rep given!
this is really annoying I don't know why google does it. My advice is to build more backlinks, get really active on DP and other do follow forums, but don't spam, i think you'll find that your results come back quickly. This is the appraoch I took when this happen to me and within 1 month all my traffic was back
File a re-inclusion request in webmaster tools, clearly you were dropped because your site was hacked and until YOU tell them it is fixed you will remain out of the index in full.