Wondering if anyone can shed some light on this. One of my sites is fairly new. However, it has been consistently getting organic google traffic between 100 to 150 searches per day and growing. Yesterday, it dropped to only four. Today, nothing. I'm at a complete loss and don't know where to go, what to do, etc. Very, very confused.
do you know where your pages have ranked for your keywords. My thinking is that google may have changed there algo slightly and you now rank lower for one or more keywords. If this is the case more backlinks are the order of the day and this should get you back on top and keep you more stable.
No, I'm just really learning SEO. I started the site in November. Really started focusing on it in late December. Then in Late January I started to pick up some Google traffic. It was growing steadily each day for a multitude of key words and then wham, nothing. As I've been doing some reading, I'm wondering if I have been thrown into the "sandbox?" How does a site get banned, how do you know if you are banned? John
...if you had a PR now its gone that could indicate banning. Also if you do site:www.yourdomain.com in Googl3 search and you have no pages shown in the results then you are banned? How many pages is your website BTW?
If I do a search on site:www.domainname.com I get no results. Never have. However, if I do a search on site:domainname.com I get results. Site is about 250 pages and growing.
Here's something that you could try now. Retrace your SEO steps and figure out if you bought a large number of backlinks, or did anything SEO related that could result in your website's dropped in organic traffic. In some cases, this could be a temporary event. Be patience and it could revert back to it's original high status.
I haven't ever purchased a backlink. I'm fortunate in that I seem to get them naturally and create them through participation on other blogs and forums. The ONLY thing I did (about two weeks ago) and talked with a bunch on here about it prior to doing was to move my index.php file from domainname.com/wordpress to the root at domainname.com Could this have done it? My search traffic was coming to specific pages within the site, they haven't moved, so it seems unlikely.
Wow! That is a shame - I am very sorry to hear of your misfortune. It sounds like your site may have been "sandboxed" because it is so new.
I think that is the case. I searched on some of my more popular keywords (those where I came up on first or second page) and I'm gone. I did click through and eventually found myself on the 29th page or so... Oh well. I'll just keep building content and keep my fingers crossed. It's just a shame as I was really starting to get some momentum and make a couple of bucks. Any truth to buying Adwords to get out of the sandbox?
On our site, we had changed servers and were unable to do a 301 redirect. cost us our PR2 and droped us in the SE. That will be the last time we make changes to our hosting.
Yes it looks like the site is now sandboxed, Just keep building links to the site and it will be back in action.
Well What I think is there is no need of using Adwords service initially. What u need is some patience. Just keep on doing whatever techniques were doing for your site promotion. U can try two more options 1. Submit ur site in fast approving free directories related to your field 2. Comment posting in DO Follow Blogs. Have patience buddy you will again get good rankings
I'm undergoing the same problem. My site is a little over 2 years old and has enjoyed organic search results from Google. All of a sudden it stopped. I woke up this morning and nothing. First I noticed that all of the US traffic seemed to have dropped, then other countries. I didn't do anything different on my site. I still have a PR of 4, but no traffic. Luckily I get traffic form other sources, but I my traffic is still down about 30 to 40%. I guess I'll have to wait it out to see what happens. In the meanwhile, I have to use plan B and write articles and submit them to directories. Any advice?
It seems I was a victim of the Google "Dewey" Dance. It appears that my site is back to where it was before the dance. I just hope the dance is over and I will remain at the top.
I got the same problem with you. My site traffic has suddenly dropped for 3 days. I'm waiting to see why. How long it was on your site? How long for your site to get back as it was? Do you build more backlinks or just wait? Pls give me some advice. Thanks.
A sudden unexplained drop like yours has happened to many other sites at various times. But in many cases it has turned out to be temporary, only lasting a week or so before the previous rankings were suddenly regained. The reason for these sudden drops and recoveries is unknown. But I think it might be some kind of glitch which causes a temporary loss of data from Google's search database.
My Google drop lasted for 3 days. In the meanwhile I decided to write more articles for article directories and look for more back links. Here's a link that seems to describe what happened to me (and probably to you too) Dewey Dance a Trip Through Memory Lane. Your traffic should come back soon if that is the case. During that period of time my hits from Google averaged about 20 a day. A far cry from its previous level. Hang in there.
If the recent Dewey update had caused it, the changes would be permanent, so that doesn't explain what happened in your case.