Lost 50% google traffic in one day - panic?
-
no one has actually said to do anything but wait, I will go against the fold and say strip out all those adsense units down the left and maybe even dump that sharing tool bar at the bottom of the page, you already have a load of social sharing buttons on each page and that bar at the bottom looks like its holding up load times.
Go into webmaster tools and request a crawl.
-
I wouldn't be surprised Alan looking at his website that a lot of links were built naturally by people linking to his site as it looks like a good resource.
I've got a website were I built some links to gain a good position and left it, over a few months that exposure built tons of new links without me knowing from all over the web.
Now if those little sites have been hit, lets say a fair amount had been wiped out then I can see how rankings could be lost.
-
i dont think what you have is wrong at all. nor do i think the google example affects you.
Do not use read more, as you want to pass relevant link text to the page.
I think Bobs advice is need edhere, dont panic.
-
After a very hard night and a lot of thinking, I've an idea.
We are using a lot of "keyword links" on our site.
It's - by the way - http://www.schicksal.com - an astrology site. We have lost 72% visibility - according to figures of sistrix.com.
So, we are doing this:
Zodiacs
Description of Zodiacs
Now a list with zodiacs
Aries (longer, descriptive title
short description of aries
In that case the "aries" keyword in the description is getting the link to the article.
I think, google doesn't like this after pengiun.
So, what is better:
a)
Aries
description
b)
Aries
description ... read more
What do you think?
Best wishes,
Georg.
-
Google provides a form where you can them that your site was hit by error: http://searchengineland.com/penguin-update-peck-your-site-by-mistake-googles-got-a-form-for-that-119698
-
Damn, it's the penguin update...
http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623
-
Dear Dean, i know it mean a lot and its a pain in the A**, i hope my comment didnt offended you.
However , u might want to take advantage of that time to review your linking neighboor , your on-site optimisation and all your website agnosic features.
It happenned to me too , but after some long hours , i was able to get back where i was before the BOOM. Good luck , im sure you can do it too !
A little wink wink that i can give , is that on my side , i moved away from html 4 to html 5 to better segment my website with
<header>,
<footer>,
<hgroup>and so on.
Best regards,
Yan Desjardins
</hgroup>
</footer>
</header>
-
"simply fell down in the SERP"
you say it like it means nothing....
-
Your websiteis not de-indexed from google , it simply fell down in SERP as you still show for your branded keywords..
Did You recieve any sort of notice in Google Webmasters Tools ?
Regards ,
Yan Desjardins
-
Yes just noticed, i thought we were all talking of the last over-op update
-
already mentioned on the post Alan
-
I wonder if anyone noticed this update http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
should be hitting now
-
The so-called "over-optimization" penalty definitely hit hard, sometime between 4/24-4/25. It is possible to see Google make a correction, but it doesn't appear that there were major changes between 4/25-4/26. Of course, this just happened, so we don't have much data.
Given the large scale of the drop and that this is a confirmed algorithm change, I think you have to start there. This is the official post from Google and I see that someone has already linked to Rand's post:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
Look specifically at the terms that dropped. Are you aggressively targeting those terms (with keyword stuff, inbound anchor text, etc.)? I think the "Don't Panic" advice has some merit - if you over-optimize to reverse over-optimize, you've just made even more of a mess. I'm not saying to sit on your hands, but dig deep into the analysis and put together a reasonable plan of attack - don't just start changing things at random.
-
Hi,
thanks for all responses so far!
I've looked in our access stats... Today we will have less visitors than yesterday, so the nitemare is still not over...
I don't think it's a good idea to wait some days and do nothing. There must be a reason for this - a penalty or a ranking algo change. And the only way around is to remove the "thing" which caused the mess.
Possibly reasons:
- Over optimized on page (could be) - restructure site and recode html
- Bad links (can't be removed easily) which are punished by google
I can't restructure / recode the site within days but within 1-2 weeks. If we get back the top positions meanwhile, I will also apply the new code to be fit for the future.
Have I overseen a thing?
Best wishes,
Georg.
-
The reason is probably -
Giving someone blanket advice that is only partially helpful is not good...
So he waits a week, and has done no research into what may have caused this, what then? Panic?
I would fully agree that panicing is the wrong idea, but so is sitting around doing nothing, as an agency - it is very easy for a person to say - just wait it out, but as a consumer what does that mean - sit around and do nothing, or proactivlely begin researching the possible causes?
So I would think a more correct answer IMHO to someone who is new to the game, would be...
Don't panic, but don't be complacent - Begin researching your tactics over the past years, your link profile your on page seo ect.. so in a few weeks IF it does not "Magically" clear itseld you can have a clear actionable plan to begin responding - two weeks of no money coming in could mean death for a business.... So why would you not begin researching while "wating"
I also do not think the "dust" will settle, this is an ongoing battle, and will be for some time to come - so waiting a few weeks on a site that = livelyhood is not a smart decision either
IMHO of course
-
I don't see why this is getting downvoted. Traditionally Google does make corrections after a significant update. The website in question is still receiving traffic and isn't completely out of the index, and could very well see the rankings go back in a week or two.
If you panic and start making site changes immediately, you may not know what the cause of the problem was. If you go and change title tags, remove some spammy looking links, change the anchor text and a handful of other things you would not know which was effective and which wasn't.
It's like pulling your goalie in hockey after going down 2-0 in the first 5 minutes. Let the updates play themselves out for a week or two and go from there.
-
Yes, that's what I would advise.
I think a lot of us have been hit with this. Just try and comply with Google as much as possible, and I think the first port of call is all the on-page SEO.
Matt.
-
The best thing you can do right now is nothing. Sit tight for about a week orso, keep an eye on your traffic and serps.Give Google some time to sort itself out and have a look when the dust settles. Don't go into panic mode and start changing all sorts of things - worst thing you can do right now.
-
No, we have no paid links. We have written several articles which were sent to press agencies over the years. Blogs, newspapers, other sites etc. are linking our content.
-
Hi Matt,
thank you for your advices! I will have a look at Rands whiteboard. So your suggestion is to reformat / restructure the html code to get out of this?
Best wishes,
Georg.
-
we need a new sub forum to deal with all this and have all answers and questions in one place.
Peoples business's are being ruined, we need to all come together in one place and learn from each other to get over this as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Please like this and I will email SEOmoz to see will they do it. Thanks
-
Hi Ivo,
thanks for your fast answer and the link to article! We have not done any article spinning (I didn't know about article spinning till last week...). We have not done any link building for the high traffic keywords, but we have done link building for other keywords (which are not affected).
No, we had no break down a month ago, I've attached our analytics...
So, if it's a penalty - what to do?
Best wishes,
Georg.
-
Hi Georg,
I have had the same problem. It is because of the latest update by Google around 'over-optimisation'.
Don't worry though, all is not lost! There are a few things that you need to change:
-
Make sure that your webpage titles are not over-optimised (i.e. 'Free Shoes, New Shoes, Sports Shoes - Shoe Company'). Make sure that they read properly and don't look spammy. Try not to repeat any of the keywords more than once, if at all.
-
Check that all of the links on the page are not suspicious. For example, having loads of anchor text linking to the same page.
-
See what your keyword density is on your webpage and see if you have maybe be keyword stuffing (Google is being a lot harsher and stricter on this now).
-
Go through your img alt attributes and check they are all relevant and not just blatanet attempts to fit in long-tail keywords.
Once you have done this, resubmit the pages to the Google index and hopefully, after a few weeks, you should start regaining some ground. Unfortunately its a bit of a waiting game now, but make sure you do everything you can to show to Google that you are not over-optimising and you should be OK.
Also, take a look at Rand's recent whiteboard Friday which goes over this.
Good luck!
Matt.
-
-
If you have built backlinks from websites that have been hit by the update then basically those backlinks which are helping you to rank have gone and therefore your rankings drop.
When you say 'lots of (good) inbound links' what we talking about directory submissions, guest posts, paid links?
-
Hi Georg,
Looks like a penalty. We have experienced similar things yesterday on a number of websites which we've been adopting overly-aggressive link building tactics and it is a result of a recent google update:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
It is not a result of your onsite SEO. There might be different reasons for it but I do consider it as a result of article spinning which might have been taking part of your link building activities. Especially if the keywords that you lost rankings for have been targeted by such links - spinned content on private or public blog networks.
Have you had some kind of drop in rankings about a month ago for those particular keywords?
Kind regards,
Ivo
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How long does google takes to crawl a single site ?
lately i have been thinking , when a crawler visits an already visited site or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?
Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz0 -
Why google is not visiting any website from past 10 days
Hi, I observed why Google is not visiting www.SubhaVastu.com from past 10 days, later I checked thoroughly, not only for my site, google stopped visiting all websites from past 10/12 days. Is Google releasing any new updates to the crawler? Any new system is releasing soon. I am expecting Google updated their crawler by this Sunday night and it may visit as usual to all sites from 12-midnight pacific time. Has anyone observed it, any information regarding on this Google step. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | SubhaVaastu0 -
Is it still possible for small businesses to rank well in google
Hi I've been playing around with ecommerce sites for a few years now and although I am no expert I'm not a complete novice. We used to do quite well in google but recent changes have halved our number of hits. I have noticed that over the last year google has given priority to large brand names as opposed to relevancy. For example, if you search for the term 'bridal jewellery' (google UK) you will see that apart from one or two the majority of placements are taken by big compnies who offer very little bridal jewellery. One or two pages at most. My question is, is it still possible to rank well against these brand names or has google made it impossible for small companies. PS we only practice ethical seo as suggested by seomoz. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks www.kerryblu.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | Dill0 -
Why does Google say they have more URLs indexed for my site than they really do?
When I do a site search with Google (i.e. site:www.mysite.com), Google reports "About 7,500 results" -- but when I click through to the end of the results and choose to include omitted results, Google really has only 210 results for my site. I had an issue months back with a large # of URLs being indexed because of query strings and some other non-optimized technicalities - at that time I could see that Google really had indexed all of those URLs - but I've since implemented canonical URLs and fixed most (if not all) of my technical issues in order to get our index count down. At first I thought it would just be a matter of time for them to reconcile this, perhaps they were looking at cached data or something, but it's been months and the "About 7,500 results" just won't change even though the actual pages indexed keeps dropping! Does anyone know why Google would be still reporting a high index count, which doesn't actually reflect what is currently indexed? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | CassisGroup0 -
Google's not indexing my blog posts anymore! Why?
Google just recently stopped indexing my blog posts immediately after being published, why could this be? I would usually post a blog post and it would be in google results within 45 seconds, now they don't show up until 6 hours later, if at all (a few never even showed up). Also, my home page doesn't even refresh when I make a change to the site. My site is CantStopHipHop [dot] comI have all in one SEO, xml sitemap generator, and webmaster tools and nothing seemed irregular in the settings.I appreciate any thoughts/help/suggestions.
Algorithm Updates | | bb2550 -
Google above the fold update
Hi everyone, Ever since the Jan 19th Google 'above the fold update' I have noticed some strange ranking changes in some of my sites. 1. rankings increased dramatically (not in top 50 to page 2) on Jan 19th for about 5 days then dropped out completely from the top 50. 2. our rankings then did the same thing again around Feb 2nd for about 5 -6 days then has bottomed out ever since. We do not have any ads on the site but our pages are dominated by images for most of the 'above the fold' section then followed by the content down the page. Any insight into this would be much appreciated. Cheers, Andrew
Algorithm Updates | | jay.raman0 -
Decrease in Organic Traffic Due to Google Places
Hello there, we are national junk removal company and have franchises in most major cities in the US. We wanted to check to see if anyone else has seen a drop in organic traffic with the changes that Google has done with the amalgamation of Google Places with the organic rankings. All our places pages are ranking quite well and we are ranking higher organically but it appears that people go to the Google Places page and then either leaving or picking up the phone and calling our 1800 number to book a job instead of going to our website to make the booking. The interesting thing is that although Google started these changes back in October 2010 we have seen the drop in organic traffic mostly starting in April, even though we have seen a steady increase in organic ranking across the board. Has any other franchise based company seen this happen as well? Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | imspecialistgotjunk0 -
Organic CTR on Google - KPI?
Hi, I was hoping for some advice on my keyword analysis I have completed. So far I have identified a hitlist of high volume keyword associated to the industry I operate in. As well as this, I'm monitoring our keyword positions within the SERPS. Question: Is there a CTR metric available depending on the position your keyword ranks within Google? i.e. If I am position 3 and looking to move to position 1 on a specific keyword, what amount of incremental search volume would be geneerated to my website? PResumably the CTR would also depend on what market you operate in too I am also going on a 65% / 35% Organic/PPC split based on keyword search volume so to give me a true reflection of the search volume available... Any advice on this would be much appreciated... Simon
Algorithm Updates | | simonsw0