Hi everyone, We have a serious issue and I would like to bring it up here for any ideas and suggestion. Traffic coming from google to one of our sites just dropped dramatically more than 60%. That brought us the concern right away because that site we normally receive a few thousand visits an hour and a big drop like that is easy to be noticed. It has happened for half a day already and here is what we have found so far. 1. Site:mysite.com still returns the same number of pages like before 2. Page rank of our pages are not changed. 3. Link:mysite.com returns normal result 4. Nearly a million pages of our site which before attracts around 60% of traffic from google now just have a couple of hundred visits for several hours. Searched on google for some keywords that before we ranked top 1 or 2 now just kicked us out of first 10 pages. Two possible reasons for this would be: 1. we spammed google and 2. We build up a link scheme and 3. we put hidden text on the page. I would not say we spamed google, because althrough we have a lot of pages listed in Google but each of them is unique and full of rich content and it is not generated by robot or anything like that. Did we build up a link scheme? We have another site which also quite big but in different language and we put link of either sites on the footer of the another. Say, if site A has 1 million pages then link B appears on site A a million times and the same for link A on site B. We don't see it as an issue because if it is, then it would affect both sites. What happened sofar is it only affects site A, and only a part of site A, not whole site A. Did we put some hidden text? Yes we did, we put them in javascript with button "show" and "hide", very obvious buttons, not long text though, only a few words and now we have removed it. My question are: when I logged into Google Webmaster Tool, I don't receive any notice or warning from Google at all, why? and with hidden text, when we search using those hidden text, we still see our pages appear on Google result, does it mean hidden text is not the cause of the problem? and what should I do now? Should I wait for a couple of days to confirm this first or should I contact Google to ask for an explanation and hopefully get back to the way it was before after fixing whatever they ask? and anybody has experienced this before, what is your experience, please share with us. Our earning is mainly on adsense and google is our main traffic source (more than 80%), just so you know how serious it is to us. Please help.
Looks like they caught you out. They got me too last year. I asked for reinclusion and pleaded for mercy! I got back after a week or so.
how did you know that they caught you? Did they send you an email or some kind of notice or you just noticed it from your traffic drop?
I guess somebody reported us to Google but I am still not entirely sure what is the cause since there is no official notice from Google at all. Really don't know what to do next. Any advice? What is the chance of getting it back and normally it takes how long?
I heard widgetbucks got penalties from Google as well...now search widgetbucks on google you won't find their main page any more and this started from last year.
the thing with our case is that not the whole site is affected, only a certain part and unfortunately that is quite an important part of the site any idea what we should do? plz
By hidden text, you mean you blended the text with the background, or people had to click on a button or something (like javascript) to see that hidden text?
We did not spam, we did not buy link and but I admit we have hidden text The hidden text is from javascript, click show and hide, very obvious show and hide button. I have seen this before in other sites, to me, it looks and sounds very natural and normal, but then suddenly it just comes up this way
I guess your best action is to contact Google....but the same to you, I think Google should have contacted you somehow
Do you use some analytics tools that you could compare before and after traffic to see where is your traffic lost ? Does your SERP are dopping quickly ? Do the traffic loss occurs after a cache by google of your site ?
yes, we use Google analytics to monitor the traffic, we also have different adsense channels to see the impression and we are pretty sure where the traffic loss occurs. Our SERP drops very quickly, from ranking 1 to outside first 10 pages for alot of keywords. Not sure what you mean. Our traffic loss occurs right away, not gradually over hours. I can see the big difference between one hour and the next one and it stays that low until now. Thanks for asking. Please advise us what to do
Please share with us your experience. Have you got it fixed yet? What is the cause? Did Google let you know?
Strange --- absolutely same situation. Sent a reinclusion request and waiting to see wat happens next. /G
Buying links will never harm your seo, yeah, ofcource hidden text, which is not relevant to content of your website may panelized you. you can contact google for the same. http://www.google.com/contact Generally they are not giving reply to each and every mail. Try to make call in webmaster help department. and than you may have actual idea that whats wrong with your website. best of luck.