I am in Google Update Hell. Well, Google Hell at least. I am starting to think that Matt Cutts and the boys at Google are targeting me personally.
Not really, but man. This has been a crazy-bad year from a Google standpoint.
First, my AdWords account gets banned for a reason that I understand, but it seemed completely unfair to me. No big deal, since I don't use AdWords much. But still, ouch.
Then, my AdSense account gets banned for absolutely no reason. I am a model advertiser when it come to Google. Still, they banned it with no reasonable explanation. Turns out that Jon Leger was absolutely right when he said:
Google doesn't care about your business. Repeat that with me: Google doesn't care about your business.
Note that Jon was talking about search traffic, but I think he has it right in general.
Most recently, my Corn Sheller site (the one I talked about over the past few months on the Podcast) got hit by the latest google update. Now this is a great site, with great information about Corn Shellers. The problem is that the link profile is not natural — it was ranking because of links from Blog Networks only, and the anchor text was not varied (two big problems given recent updates). Here is the impact that Google updates have had on traffic.
I'm not whining. This is all part of the deal. I did not use my normal process to build this site — it was just a quick and dirty test to show the power of KeyWord Canine (which is awesome, by the way). Still, the site was making more than a dollar per day with no work. That is pretty cool, and I hate to see Google hammering it.
We'll discuss this more on the next podcast episode. Until then….
Wow what a nose dive. Sucks. Looking forward to your next podcast Mark!
@cloudklein Thanks. Should be tonight (of course I said that last night too. Been pretty busy.
What I’ve noticed more than anything lately is that the latest Google updates are very “anchor text” based. I saw shifts in rankings on aggressively targeted keywords while the same page that was linked to still ranked high for other terms.
Keep in mind the page linked to was the same…..so it has the same backlinks, page authority, etc….it’s just that it dropped for aggressively targeted keywords.
I know this isn’t the only thing going on, though, and different sites are seeing different issues but that’s something consistent I’ve seen.
My suggestion is to try and get some higher quality links with varied anchor text…and figure out ways to get social shares…I know, easier said than done, right? 😉
@ShaneEubanks I agree with you — I saw a post over at MicroSiteMasters that correlates 60% matching anchor text (money keyword anchortext matching) to lost ranking. Sites with less than 60% matching anchors were not impacted. Correlation is not causation, but that is pretty strong anecdotal evidence.
Hard to get real backlinks to a site on corn shellers. LOL
You may not be whining, but I am. Its a crappy update…and penalized many of my most populat and most naturally-linked sites. The evidence is that Google is selling out and preferring the big dogs whether or not the sites are relevant. Not to mention that I received an invalid clicks warning overnight.
I hate to hear that @chazzbro — especially that part about invalid clicks. That was the first thing that happend to me — my account was banned 2 weeks later with no additional warning or communication.
@masonworld the worst part is..i DID click on one of my own ads. But only to get the URL to block an advertiser I didnt like. 9 years in the program…and I get treated like a criminal. *sigh*
@chazzbro I have heard if you report that to Google (if that is really their issue) that reporting helps. However, I am having a hard time believing one click caused them to email you.
I hate to hear that @chazzbro — especially that part about invalid clicks. That was the first thing that happend to me — my account was banned 2 weeks later with no additional warning or communication. I really REALLY hope that does not happen to you.
My cross stitch site has been dropping in traffic recently and it irks me, over the past 3 months I’ve gradually dropped for all of my best keywords. And I have a natural linking profile on that site, it’s nearly 10 years old. Some days I think Google just doesn’t like me.
Hey Mark, that’s rough… I’ve been hurt myself, and my site hasn’t used many “tricks” like blog networks at all. My traffic was at just under 3000 visitors per day and then suddenly dropped to under 1000. My site is buried on the second page for my main keyword and not at all for others.
This whole year things like this have been going on seems like.
Can you post any tips and tricks on how to come back after your site got hit? Because mine was hit too and now my site was buried waay back in the SERPs.
Matt Cutts and SEOMoz have some good advice on recovering from Penguin. It really a matter of cleaning up after bad links and low quality content.