Yet Another Google Update

[Josh]

Not sure how many of you folks watch your traffic, but we have yet another google update. As is usually the case, some of my sites appear to be doing better and some appear to have taken a hit, but it's mostly my "test" sites that took a hit. One that was averaging around 30 unique visitors a day just dropped down to less than 10. It might recover, especially if I give it some help, but definitely different.

Anyone else watch their traffic and see anything happen?

 

[STIBROKER]

Not sure how many of you folks watch your traffic, but we have yet another google update. As is usually the case, some of my sites appear to be doing better and some appear to have taken a hit, but it's mostly my "test" sites that took a hit. One that was averaging around 30 unique visitors a day just dropped down to less than 10. It might recover, especially if I give it some help, but definitely different.

Anyone else watch their traffic and see anything happen?

happened to my life site on the 20th.....

 

[thecorp]

Not sure how many of you folks watch your traffic, but we have yet another google update. As is usually the case, some of my sites appear to be doing better and some appear to have taken a hit, but it's mostly my "test" sites that took a hit. One that was averaging around 30 unique visitors a day just dropped down to less than 10. It might recover, especially if I give it some help, but definitely different.

Anyone else watch their traffic and see anything happen?

On my main blog (which I've had for almost 4 years) I've seen huge swings in traffic. Last April 2011 I got hit BAD with the Panda update and saw a 70% drop in traffic <insert puke noise>. At the time I had was averaging over 100k visitors a month, so that hurt....bad.

After 9 months of being in a state of depression, I finally got my traffic back and thus far I've survived all the Penguin updates *fingers crossed*.

The BIG lesson learned is that a website/blog is not just about adding good content. Making sure you don't have broken links, a ton of redirects, too many big file images, and the time your site loads all have an important factor, too.

 

[termlifeinsuranceus]

Yah, we noticed a little uptick just over the weekend. I figured it had something to do with people taking the week off and got all their errands run during the week so come Sat and Sun they had time to search for insurance.

 

[Benjamin Irons]

Something that I am watching very closely is google's entry into the product comparison market directly. In the UK google is directly offering credit card comparisons (and obviously ranking themselves first). They are moving this out to other countries and if it works for Credit Cards, why not for Life Insurance. I wouldnt be surprised if websites offering these types of services start to get squeezed in search results to start softening them up for googles entry!

 

[dfw1]

One of the things I have found out is diversity of anchor text links pointing to your site. By diversity I mean, using anchor text words like Click Here, Find out more, get info, email me, as well as expanding and using every possible combination of your keywords related to your niche. Try to avoid using the same anchor text keyword over and over again to avoid tripping the Google spam filters.

I have a website totally unrealted to insurance that is a job search engine. Pre-panda and penguin I was getting TONS of traffic for the keyword "job search engines and other simular keywords. I was on page 2 of Google, some times page one. The this new algorythym came out and my site JobCab.com went to position 785! It's really time consuming to fix all of this and create new links that include a large diversification of anchor text keywords.