Traffic down by 80%

Originally Posted by dutchbb

I don't think this update was just the toolbar pr export, the traffic went down at the same time the pr is lost. Either they changed the algorythm to change the value of some backlinks, or something else happened. On some of the serps my site was on top , after this update it's not even on the first 5 pages. And they still haven't updated their directory

My page rank on home page didint change atall its 4 even now after the update.Internal pages have become stronger (in PR terms) then before and all archive pages now PR4 which were pr3 before the update.

My guess is that google has hit internal links very hard this time...

I have never found the connection between PR and placement on the ranking of search for key terms to be direct.

With that said, Technology Questions traffic dropped from 20K to 6K over the last few days. This corresponds to my changing the php version to php 5 and the site feels slower. I'm going to have to figure out why before I get too irritated.

Oh well. The site is done for fun and not profit. Still, heavy traffic is always nice.

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

This is a very good read based on many opinions on what drives search engine ranking for a page.

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Before I forget (again): Thank you very much Code Monkey!!

VERY interesting read.

Never mind at all If you didn`t change any thing.

This happen befor to one to my friends. His google visitors down from 15K per day to 1K, it take 3 days and he back as normal.

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

Just keep adding quality original content and you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Lol, I have been adding quality content like crazy, every week a new article, thousands of new posts by members, new backlinks etcetc. And for a while the traffic went up and up to the point of needing server upgrades , so everything was working out great. The system was actually rewarding like you say.

Now exactly on the day that the 'visual' PR bar is updated all that traffic, all the good serps I build up are completely gone. But you say it has nothing to do with it. If the PR bar is a visual representation of the results you get as a site in google, than we should have got an increase of visual pr.

I tell you what's going on, Google decided some sites were going so well (a litle bit too well!), they needed to be stopped instead of rewarded. So they lowered the pagerank of those sites and now we are basically screwed for all the efforts we did. Thank you Google, you really did a great job for us :(

That's about the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time. I'm sure Google picked out a handful of sites (including yours) because they were doing so great and then punished them manually.

The conspiracy theories never cease to amaze me.

They didn't need to do it manually of course, just some changes in algorithm would be enough. Why does it sound so strange to assume Google doesn't want sites to 'grow' too fast? They want to limit the monopoly of some sites on the serps, because it gives users a monotone view of content on the web. Call it conspiracy or whatever you like, but the fact is as a search engine they are watching closely to give the end user the best objective search results possible. Limiting the monopoly gives other sites a chance to show up higher in the serps. I's not fair for us who have worked hard to get there, but I believe this is what going on. I think you would be surprised to what secrets Google has that never see the light of day...

Its been more then 3 days now :( this shit happened on April 28 and its 1st of may now :(

I am hoping this is not permanent.

Originally Posted by dutchbb

They didn't need to do it manually of course, just some changes in algorithm would be enough. Why does it sound so strange to assume Google doesn't want sites to 'grow' too fast? They want to limit the monopoly of some sites on the serps, because it gives users a monotone view of content on the web. Call it conspiracy or whatever you like, but the fact is as a search engine they are watching closely to give the end user the best objective search results possible. Limiting the monopoly gives other sites a chance to show up higher in the serps. I's not fair for us who have worked hard to get there, but I believe this is what going on. I think you would be surprised to what secrets Google has that never see the light of day...

When things are going good Google is awesome. When they are bad then its a conspiracy theory against fast growing sites. Things change. Algorithms change. They don't change algorithms to punish fast growing sites and help new sites.

Looks like things are back to normal but its 4AM here in India and the rankings only went back to normal like 10 mins ago so cant tell if I have regained all my traffic but yes my site is at No1 for "reliance broadband" beating the crap out of the official websites again.

Some of the other major keywords are returning good results aswell but will have to see if this is going to stay or not.

I am not sure that google alog is indeed back to normal as I actually gained a few PR7 and a lot of PR6 link in the last 2 days.Can some one confirm that thier rankings are back to normall with everything untouched?

my total members who have visited per day has dropped, same with my registering total, post total, thread total, visitor total. it all dropped. I'm putting it down to the season currently, but im trying extra hard to build it back up again.

Just thought I would update this thread...

My traffic returned back to normal after three months of this problem starting.