My website's traffic from Google went down by 50%

My website is 3 years old. It was doing very well and traffic grew naturally over the time. My website is free classifieds and all it's content generated by end users (from their ads). Every 3 months my traffic increased by 20% (in average). Every ad placed by users indexed by Google within an hour or two. I have thousands indexed pages, which returned in Google searches with keywords applicable to particular ad.
But, on November 5th my traffic suddenly dropped by 50%. I checked my pagerank and it still the same. I still have thousands indexed pages. Every ad still indexed by Google and appears within hour or two, but my pages are not returned in Google searches for relevant keywords to the placed ad(s).
As result, if people are searching to buy a car in Montreal, my pages are not returned and this causes lost in traffic. My website still comes for some keywords, but it's placements also got changed. For example, before for: Montreal Classifieds search, my website was second on a first page (after craigslist), but now it is still on a first page, but 8th place.
Please note I have similar websites for different cities and these are not impacted and behave the same.
My website is http://www.montreallisting.ca

Please help me to find the root cause for such traffic drop.

 

What exactly SEO actions you provided for your website?

 

I'm not using any external SEO services, not link exchanges and not buying back links.

Yes I did change recently on my homepage. Since my website operates in Montreal, I need my websites bilingual. I added separate categories in french.
Now I have:
/vehicles-tires-rims-for-sale/
and
/vehicles-pneus-jantes/
From my homepage, user can switch the language. Based on selected language my website shows links in selected language, pointing to appropriate directory (English version /vehicles-tires-rims-for-sale/ or French version /vehicles-pneus-jantes/).

Before that change, only link text was changing, but both language versions pointed to the same English version (/vehicles-tires-rims-for-sale/ for example).
Exact same change was done on my other websites (which in fact share same infrastructure, just different domains), and these are not impacted.

 

any other ideas?

 

Yes, you have been outranked by the competition.

SEO is a continuous process. If you haven't really done any in a while it is inevitable that your site's ranking will eventually drop.

PS: Pagerank has nothing to do with SERPs

 

This couldn't be further from the truth.

SERP position is determined by several factors, one of the main ones being Google PageRank.

 

Sounds like the very typical Google Dance to me.
Can you provide specific SERPs you've dropped significantly for?

 

When I was searching for title of every posted ad as follows: montreal [title of the ad], the link to that ad was usually returned on a first page.
If I'm taking the "Top search queries" from Google's Webmaster tools here is the snapshot data before the drop:
----------------------------------------
Google query | returned position
---------------------------------------
montreal classifieds position=2
nouveau condo verdun position=1
post ads in montreal position=1
veronique jacques ndg position=1
buy house in montreal position=2
local for rent in montreal position=2
refrigerator repair in ville emard position=2
duplex a vendre montreal cote des neiges position=1
montreal classified position=1
classifieds montreal position=2
classified ads montreal position=1
classified montreal position=1
montreal classified ads position=1
free classified montreal position=1
free classified ads montreal position=3
buy a house in montreal canada position=1
buy house montreal position=1
cdj 1000 mk3 montreal position=1
free classifieds montreal position=1
free local classifieds montreal position=1
montreal ads position=1
montreal listing position=1

Before the drop in all these searches, for example, my pages returned on a first page on 1st ,2nd or 3rd place from the top. Now my pages moved down and in most of the cases not returned in a first 5 pages.

 

We can discuss "why it happened", but we should discuss "what to do" instead.

It's possible that your website has lost some link of good quality and thus rankings got worse. All you have to do is work hard on getting some new links and as time goes by it'll get better!

Want an example? During the last 2-3 months I've exchanged some links with related websites and now one of my pages jumped to the top10 for a keyword (a single-word keyword) which is searched almost 1M times per month (based on data from adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). OK, I know that I wouldn't get 823K visits per month just via this phrase as these data don't tell how much traffic you can get, it's about how many searches were performed, BUT it's about progress. I am doing something and it's worth it!

Do it too. Don't waste your time on asking "why", and do something that affects your website's traffic positively instead.

 

Check you rankings, It is possible that you lost rankings for some of your keywords.

 

I think google penalize your ranking.

 

People are placing ads in different categories, each ad is a new set of keywords.

I'm sorry for my "stupid question", how can I check ranking for my keywords, and what my keywords are?

 

I think if Google penalize my website, then I should receive some notification in Webmaster tools. My website still crawled every hour, still returned for some queries and number of indexed pages is 7,520. I don't see any signs of penalty. Can you please give me the way to check that?

 

I only went through the first few of you examples, but I culdn't help but notice that you are not optimized for the first few pages.

For example, the exact phrase "nouveau condo verdun" does not exist anywhere on your website. neither does the exact phrase "post ads in montreal". Therefore, I'm not surprised that your site doesn't show up in the first few pages of google for this term.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...__US345&q="veronique+jacques+ndg"&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...real"+site:www.montreallisting.ca&btnG=Search

For the term "local for rent in montreal", you have a few pages with this exact phrase, but none of them have the phrase in the meta title.
http://www.google.com/search?q="loc...ent=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGGL_en___US345&filter=0

From what I see, I wouldn't expect your site to come up on the first page for any of these key phrases. You're going to have to have at least the key phrase in the meta title.

Perhaps you've drastically changes your meta titles?

 

Probably this ad (nouveau condo verdun) got expired.
I have another example of "http://www.montreallisting.ca/ads/montreal-1995-buick-regal-including-4-winter-tires-ad-86844/"
This URL is indexed in Google.
When I search for: 1995 Buick Regal including 4 winter tires in montreal
my URL not returned, even title has: Montreal 1995 Buick Regal including 4 winter tires. - Vehicles - cars / trucks / vans / SUVs

But before my page was returned (not sure about this specific, but in most cases first page in a first 5 from the top).
The only change I've made recently in titles was to append the city to the beginning of the title.
Before it was: 1995 Buick Regal including 4 winter tires. Montreal - Vehicles - cars / trucks / vans / SUVs
And now it is: Montreal 1995 Buick Regal including 4 winter tires. - Vehicles - cars / trucks / vans / SUVs

About <meta name="title" content=""> I was under impression that it not used by Google, and as such not really care about it. I took care for description meta and title of the page and <h1> tags, too include ad subject.

 

If they are placing ads don't they expire and the page is removed?

 

If ad is expired or removed, it will not be available on website. Instead a generic message will be shown, notifying that this ad has expired.

 

Well, for one thing, you've changed the title of the page. on oct 26th, google saw your page as this...

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cach...es"&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

The title of the page was "1995 Buick Regal including 4 winter tires..."etc.

However, today, your title is different....
http://www.montreallisting.ca/ads/montreal-1995-buick-regal-including-4-winter-tires-ad-86844/

Now it says "Montreal 1995 Buick Regal including 4 winter tires..."

You can definitely expect some fluctuation in SERPs when you start messing around with the meta titles. You've probably ended up sandboxed.

 

I could be 1 of a million different things. Classified ad sites have drawn a lot of attention from Google of late due to SEOs spamming them for followed links to sites.

If your ad pages allow people to place ads w/ followed links and those links are not tightly moderated (as in you have to approve ANY ad that contains a link, and you deny those linking inappropriately or to bad neighborhoods), then it is possibly that part of your site or all of your site might be under some type of penalty. I'm not saying that it is... only that it is a possibility... especially if someone if your site or the target of your site was reported and a manual review revealed something "fishy" to Google.

Remember, you are responsible for all outbound links on your site. If you allows someone to plant a link on your site to a bad neighborhood site, and the target of that link is reported and found to violate Google's webmaster guidelines, your URLs can be penalized for promoting a bad neighborhood.

Another possibility is that Google simply implemented an algo change where they are somehow devaluing classified sites in their SERPs.

I would use analytics to find out which keyword phrases your site has lost traffic for and/or which URLs who used to receive organic traffic have seen a big dropoff.

 

I'm not allowing links on website. People may place URLs as text, but not a link. If somebody places:
<a href=
it will be translated to: &lt;a href=

I see change in all my keywords. For some I went down, but for majority my pages are not returned.

For "You've probably ended up sandboxed." - how long it would take to get my state as it was before (if at all)? Changing title, should not be considered as bad thing and cause that. Please note, similar change took place on my other websites and they are OK (I hope will stay like that).