Noticing many major sites have declined in their traffic for the 10 month period ending March 1st, 2012, has anyone else observed this? (greater than 40% - 50% loss)
Trying to decide if this has been due to the economy. Or, the change in type of serp results, ie; favoring site pages having the question-response type format.
What do you mean by “many major sites”? Which sites? How do you know they have declined in traffic?
Mike
I think there is no major update in these days in any search engine algorithm, even Google don’t have any update. They are running panda very frequently and some small changes every week but no major change which can hit websites very badly. I think this is only happening with the your website, compete is also not a reliable source so we can’t consider that data is accurate. You can Google trends for that and check if there is drop in all websites.
Also suffering from the same issue and still want to know where we are lacking. looking for some more fruitful answers.
So how does Compete.com know that “many major sites have declined in their traffic”? Do all the major site operators disclose their traffic figures to it? Or, is it just an estimate based on who-knows-what method?
My point is that you shouln’t necessarily believe any figures unless the person stating them can demonstrate how they were obtained.
But even if your supposition is correct, it’s got nothing to do with how your site or my site is doing. Nor is it connected with SEO or Google algorithm changes, since any change that pushes a site down would push another site up.
I doubt that the economy is a factor either. Was the economy (of the entire world) in overall better shape ten months ago than it was today?
Personally, I woulnd’t worry about any of this.
Mike
I guess I could have been more direct.
What I’m getting at, is the trend toward returning results that model person-to-person interactions. The question answer format and its gain over the more "traditional’ results. Looking at how forceful of a trend this is, and, whether it is simply in vogue or becoming a presiding factor. [I]With more sites being designed/redesigned to fit this need and given what I take to be, more of these type pages being returned in the top results.
Mentioning the economy, and if there is anything else, that might isolate this as a growing trend in and of itself.[/I]
I think Google is just making more adjustments to how people are linking. I’m finding having too many exact match anchor backlinks seem to be getting hit. Try mixing up more phrases with your backlinks and see what happens.