I daily browse tens of webmaster forums and one recent tendency I couldn’t help noticing is the astonishing number of threads talking about sudden decrease in Google search traffic. So here is a quick list of possible reasons this might have happened with some notes of how to handle the situation and how to tell if that’s what actually happened:
1. You’ve been penalized (most obvious one considering Google’s latest aggressive punishing policy). Most often this will also trigger the following:
- you have lost all your rankings for all your keywords;
- your site has been dropped out of index.
Solution: think what you have done wrong, clean up your site (and tactics) and ask for reinclusion (better: “reconsideration”). If you are sure that you are good enough for a human review, you stand a good chance to be forgiven.
2. Your site has been hacked. Today that’s also a common scenario today. I have listed a few signs of the condition in my previous post.
3. Google is tweaking its algorithm. That’s a highly probable situation considering last year Google “launched more than 450 new improvements, about 9 per week on the average”. Some most recent rumors include:
- Google’s “special” attitude to .info domains;
- Google deranking most directories; etc
4. Overall (seasonal) change in searches. Yep, sometimes your traffic drop has nothing to do with either you or Google. People won’t search for snow in summer and that’s life. Sometimes that can be due to fashion trends, political and economical changes, etc. You may try to explore Google trends to find such patterns.
5. Your competitors increased their promotional efforts. Like I said previously SEO is about constant competition. You can’t achieve the top and rest assured you are going to be there for life. You are being watched by those who want to be in your place. So do what your competitors are doing:
- Evaluate and track your competitors;
- Steal your competitors’ link building and social media promotion techniques;
- Improve your on-site SEO.
Remember what once brought you on top might be not enough to let you stay there.
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Comments
8 responses so far ↓
Olavi Tonisson on Jun 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thats interesting. Are .info domains somehow penaltized?
SEO Mentor on Jun 10, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Thanks for the great list of reasons why our Google Traffic may have dropped!
Jeff on Jun 10, 2008 at 10:39 pm
None of these claims can be substantiated. With such thin content you might as well take up political commentary.
~Jeff
mark rushworth on Jun 11, 2008 at 3:51 am
… if you’re talking about the recent drop in traffic then its down to the Google DEWEY update which seems to have re-written several rules to push google books into top positions for multiple terms, expect something similar when KNOLS, googles wikipedia competitor goes fully online. Google only do an algo change if it benefits them!
Ann Smarty on Jun 11, 2008 at 3:52 am
@Olavi Tonisson, I don’t think .info domains can be penalized… Rumor has it that Google “likes” them less than other TLDs but still this is not confirmed.
Ruben Zevallos Jr. on Jun 11, 2008 at 5:47 am
Thanks for the tips… I’m reading at forums, lot’s of people are being penalized over the last months… even my web site was… and I still do not know what… my competitors still the same… I think Google change it’s rules without advice…
Pittsburgh SEO on Jun 11, 2008 at 8:51 am
This will serve as a great resource. Thanks!
Mark on Jun 21, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Thanks for the info, yes my site was fine until a few weeks ago, I noticed a big drop in traffic to the site, I still have a few 1000 pages in Goggles index but many of my key pages don’t seem to appear now. Perhaps you are right in that Google is getting tougher on directories, I was No1# on Google for Best Local Directory for the last seven years, but now when I check this criteria Google seems to rank random pages, I still appear on the first page. Lets see what happens over the coming weeks to see if things change back, sometimes I think many people react to quickly to the sudden drop or disappearance and immediately start changing content and adjusting Title Tags and Content Descriptions, thinking that the algorithm has changed, in my opinion its best to wait it out for a couple of months. Relevant criteria will always win in the end.
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