Traffic from Google Dropped 90% Overnight - WHY???

My site's URL (web address) is: http://www.hoteldealsrevealed.com

About 2 weeks, I noticed a very sudden drop in Google traffic to my site. I was getting between 200 to 400 visitors from Google per day and this suddently dropped by about 90%.

****This is a long post! I apologize in advance but I want to make sure I cover as much information as possible.****

When I looked into the problem I noticed that I still have several hundred pages indexed by Google when I perform the site:HotelDealsRevealed.com command. Therefore, I assume I am not banned from Google. However, when I performed the link:HotelDealsRevealed.com command, all but 2 of my back links have disappeared. Furthermore, virtually all of my keywords or key phrases SERPs have dropped very low or disappeared entirely.

About 2 weeks ago when the drop in Google traffic happened, I made the following changes to my site:

1. I tweaked the home page title and description slightly, and made menu changes to the entire site. These were not major changes and I can't imagine why they would cause the problem, but to be on the safe side I reversed these changes.

2. I changed the registration information of the domain. My hosting company offers a service called "ID Protect" where it displays the host company's information on Whois instead of my own personal information. I use HostGator. Could this be the problem?

I went into Google Webmasters Tools and I found 2 problems:

1. I had an invalid date in one of my XML sitemaps.

2. I had a "soft 404" which Google describes as 404-like content. This was caused by a post in my forum that was deleted but wasn't removed from the sitemap. When Google went there, the page said, "This post no longer exists."

Both of these errors have been fixed now even though they are still showing as errors on GWT. I guess it takes time for Google to detect the fixes? Some other observations from GWT:

1. Google is still crawling my site on a regular basis.

2. GWT still shows hundred + backlinks to my site from dozens of different external sites. They just don't show up when I enter link:HotelDealsRevealed.com in the Google search bar.

3. I have a number of pages that have duplicate meta descriptions and therefore show up as HTML suggestions. This is the result of people replying to forum topic... the subject of the forum topic is used as the meta description. This is typical of all PHPBB3 bulletin boards (of which there are thousands), so I suspect this can't be the problem.

4. I have 3 different XML sitemaps for this entire site. One is a sitemap that I manage manually for all my static pages. The other is for a Wordpress blog on the site. The third is for the PHPBB forum. There are some duplicate URLs in these sitemaps (clean-up stuff that I haven't gotten around to doing). Note: This is not duplicate content, just the same page referenced in 2 different sitemaps. Would this negatively affect me?

I spent a lot of time reading Google Webmaster Guidelines and I don't believe I am violating any of their guidelines except for: Until recently, I participated in a link exchange program called GotLinks. I first signed up for this over a year ago and haven't actively participated in it since, but only in the last 2 days or so did I actually take this down from my site and remove myself from their program.

I ran copyscrape and it turned up no duplicate content. I also ran a spam detector on my home page and it didn't detect anything wrong.

My questions are:

1. What could have caused this problem? Am I being penalized?

2. How do I fix the problem?

Many thanks for all who are attempting to take a look at this!

 

if that happen for a few hours its just part of Google update and if it comes back,it just fluctuate because of random changes of Google algorithm.

 

It's been 2 weeks!

 

if you have not done something to cheat on google,do not worry.all of your links will come back.

 

This is something that has been happening for the past two weeks. One of my sites had the same thing happen about two weeks ago. If you read through the posts, several of sites had the same thing happen to them. As of yesterday, sometime last night, my site started to stabilize again. With all the updates that Google has released these past couple of weeks, I believe they are/were concentrating getting the updates released then move on to the lessor important things, such as impressions.

 

I had a similar situation a while back. I was ranked well on all my keywords (usually 1 or 2). Than one day I was ranked in the hundreds for the same keywords. It happen after I made some link changes. I guess I went overboard and google penalized me for spamming. I removed the links I added. It took a few weeks but eventually I got my ranking back for the keywords.

 

Thanks for the replies so far. I hope to get back up on Google soon. Not doing anything intentionally malicious to school Google.

 

Are the links "nofollow"?

 

Yes this is sure if you have not violate any terms of Google then you links will come back

 

Maybe your serps got bumped by a wiki page or something. Happen to me and my traffic was cut in halve.

 

Sometimes site changes can trigger an algorithmic penalty. They typically last several months - unless they are manually lifted by Google following the filing of a "reconsideration request".

We are shortly launching a campaign to increase transparency surrounding penalties so website owners can at least confirm with the search engine whether a penalty has been imposed. Contact me if you'd like to find out more or add your site to our growing list of case studies.
Marc

 

So it sounds like I have to be patient and keep my fingers crossed for a reconsideration request.

Thanks everyone.

 

If you discover the reason your site is penalized and fix it, you can appeal to Google for re-evaluation.

 

I had suffered the same problem some time back on one of my sites but after 3 weeks I got my rank back. Thats the problem of only relying on google for traffic. Diversify

 

oberviously , you were penalized by google ,
you have done something which make google unhappy

 

I had similar issues twice:
First time it happen in November 2009 and recovered back within one month. Not just recovered back, but actually continued to grow and by April 2010 my traffic was 3 times higher compared to traffic before the drop. I didn't do anything special that time. Never used any triks, just content, more content and keywords. I played a bit with titles and I assume that was the reason, but is just an assumption.
Then second drop happen mid of April 2010 with no special reason, no changes on my websites. The drop was about 75%. Since that last drop I never recover. My traffic doubled since last drop, but still half of what it was before the last drop.
Please note it is not about penalties. Google visits my website constantly, indexes hundreds pages everyday.
As soon is your content getting indexed and you receive traffic from Google - you are not penalized. May be just lost your rankings, or others overcome.

 

I guess I am not clear on the difference between a "ban" and a "penalty". Clearly I'm not banned, just poor SERPs. Question: When it happened to you, did you find that your links didn't show up in Google when you used the link: command? When I perform this for my domain, I only see 2 links. However, when I just enter my domain, I get hundreds of pages linking to my site. Also, GWT shows plenty of links to my site.

 

link:yourdomain shows only backlinks to your website.
site:yourdomain shows all your indexed pages. you can also change search options to show recent results, which will show you last indexed page.
In my cases, pages were indexed constantly, but not returned in search results.

 

Earlier do you used to receive geographically targeted traffic? (say like from google.co.uk, google.com.au etc.)
If Yes I have a doubt that your whois info change might have impacted this.
I know Google uses hosting IP Address (for top level domains) for geographical traffic unless you have manually set your site preference thru your Google Webmaster Account. Not sure if whois registration info has an impact on Search Result algorithm. But I have a slight doubt on that...

There are also chances that your site's ranking dropped due to the cyclical algorithm change by Google.

 

Would you like to add your site as a mini case study to our growing list of websites which have suffered a suspected penalty, but their owners have not been able to confirm this with the search engine? To do this, please contact me.