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My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

goodcheapandfast.com

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Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#131

Post by nandreev »

bilekas wrote: post #106
nandreev wrote: post #90

Once again HN gets baited into sending massive traffic into an affiliate link farm! Adding this particular tactic into my repertoire of headlines

This is a curious one.. Especially seeing as the Alex info on it seems to show that it's been doing very well the last 90 days, 45 specifically. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/goodcheapandfast.com#traffics...

Regardless I'm impressed that he's going for very competitive search terms e.g. "best robot vacuums" and "best gaming chairs".

This game is dominated by big brands and aged domains, so if you can squeak in to page 1 for just a single one of these search terms you're well in the money.

The backlink profile is instructive, some solid link building from established domains (esquire, seekingalpha, etc.)

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#132

Post by tharkun__ »

Triv888 wrote: post #44
jjcon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mom forgot her gmail password and no longer had the same mobile number for a reset, the secondary reset option was set to my email but would not send a reset despite this. I’m in a similar position except I know my password. Google decided for whatever reason that my location was too different and now requires that I verify via a phone number I no longer have. I have access to the recovery email and even get ‘su…

I've had that problem too, multiple times, where I knew the password but Google wouldn't let me use it (I almost lost my account). Google doesn't like users that clear cookies, block trackers, etc... I wish that there was a way to disable those "protections".

There is a really really simple one (at least for your private life but if your company uses G-Suite, you always have the admin to take care of things you forget):

Do not use Google! It's as simple as that. I have never had a Gmail account until an Android device sort of forced it on me, because I definitely didn't want to link things up to my real email address, so I just signed up for the whole thing. Do I ever use that email address? Definitely not! Why would I?

What happens if I ever loose access to that account? I have to register a new one for my Android device(s). Boohoo.

Some of this obviously requires 'abstinence' and not having the same 'cool toys' as other people. I.e. if I buy lots of fancy apps that I actually rely on for my daily life, then loosing this Google Account will hurt. No longer have a PC and do everything including your banking, gaming etc. with the tablet (i.e. things you really need or things you paid a lot of money for)? Well, welcome to the walled garden where Google practically owns you.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#133

Post by whenitrains »

_jal wrote: post #80
jjcon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mom forgot her gmail password and no longer had the same mobile number for a reset, the secondary reset option was set to my email but would not send a reset despite this. I’m in a similar position except I know my password. Google decided for whatever reason that my location was too different and now requires that I verify via a phone number I no longer have. I have access to the recovery email and even get ‘su…

This is one reason I will not give out a phone number for the vast majority of services. If that means I can't use something, so be it. Building proprietary, impossible-to-understand Rube Goldberg mechanisms based on associations between accidental aspects of my life (location:phone number pairs, for instance) is not a security system, it is a design for randomly fucking me over. If your system is designed to fuck me…

This is a great point.

I'm going to try and onboard this thinking into my life.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#134

Post by billllll »

zaroth wrote: post #16

Google is doing a terrible job at it’s core responsibility. I look forward to watching the company falter over the coming decade. Switching costs for a search engine are pretty damn low. And yet their search product is littered with crap and exploits users like only a monopolist would. Ideally they’ll continue burning goodwill by doing things like adding some fact-checking or censorship “features” into Gmail, delisti…

> Google is doing a terrible job at it’s core responsibility

I'm not quite sure what Google's "core responsibility" here is, besides to make money while meeting some bare minimum threshold for not harming society. They certainly don't owe you a perfect search service for free, just like you don't owe it to them to use their search service.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#135

Post by Hnrobert42 »

nandreev wrote: post #90

Once again HN gets baited into sending massive traffic into an affiliate link farm! Adding this particular tactic into my repertoire of headlines

How do you k ow this is an affiliate link farm?

What do you mean once again? I read WAY too much HN, and this is the first time I’ve read about this issue with someone whose site focuses on affiliate marketing. Are posts like this common if you read “new” HN articles?

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#136

Post by jere »

blunte wrote: post #121
jere wrote: post #74

I have no clue about this topic and this comment isn't representative of my employer whatsoever, but... Since you've never experienced this with other domains, does the word cheap have to do with it? When I think domains, "cheap" instantly reminds me of those early quasi-legal online pharmacies and if I see it in an email almost certainly it's spam of one sort of another. I could see being problematic in spam filters…

It's a fairly common English expression that's used especially when giving a quote for development of some product or service to a client (or manager): "Good, cheap, and fast: pick two". Cheap is just the everyday word for low cost. It can also mean low quality, but that connotation depends more on context. Besides, there are many other successful companies with "cheap" in their domain names.

I'm well aware, but a bayesian spam filter probably is not. If you look up lists of words most likely to trigger spam filters, "cheap" will be in every one of them. I can't say that is what's happening here but it seems plausible at least.

I would also argue that spam messages aren't really trying to convince you something is low quality, it's precisely the low cost aspect that they're to convince you of even if the product is actual low quality.

I'm sure there's other companies with cheap in their domains/headers, but none stand out and I would have no idea if they depend on SEO anyway.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#137

Post by freitasm »

Doing a reverse IP lookup you can see there are more than 1000 domains hosted in a single IP address (the domain has four IPv4 addresses). Search engines will sometimes lower ranking based on your "neighbours" - perhaps the OP could start using a service such as Cloudflare (which still have multiple domains per IP but would automatically get a bunch of new IPs, so perhaps "start fresh" on that aspect.

Even on the free plan you can create "Firewall rules" (up to five). Create one that just logs the traffic from known bots. Claim the domain in Google Search Console (no script needed on page) and see the stats for that domain and match those with the Cloudflare traffic. This will help identify if there's something going on - are the Bingbot and Googlebot visiting or not at all? What pages are they looking at?

The robots.txt file is complex - repeated paths that shouldn't really be there. Perhaps create a Cloudflare rule to block access to those paths to everyone but the owner on a static IP address?

After this is done then the OP would know a bit more about what's going on.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#138

Post by 8note »

Imnimo wrote: post #110
mdoms wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever he would do in a universe that does not exist is irrelevant. We live in this universe.

The point I'm making is that if his business is only possible because of Google, it's silly to ask what his alternatives are. It's not like he'd have a thriving business if only Google didn't exist. Instead, he's reliant on Google choosing to rank his page highly enough to get traffic for search queries that will result in people clicking on his affiliate links (who he's also reliant on). Google doesn't owe him any p…

They're a monopoly, so yes?

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#139

Post by geofft »

donmcronald wrote: post #115
viraptor wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Google? Both totp and second device authentication are still supported.

Recovery email, SMS, TOTP, other 2FA. Now there are 4 ways to compromise your account. Awesome! And the solution, according to Google, is to pair those methods with some other arbitrary factors to make it really secure. Just ignore the fact that almost every option is vulnerable to real time MitM via phishing if a user doesn't understand they're at the wrong URL. So what does Google do? They deemphasize the URL and t…

In fairness to Google, the one mechanism that isn't vulnerable to phishing is the one that Google put a lot of work into designing, implementing, standardizing, and evangelizing, and the others were existing and easy-to-implement options.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#140

Post by geofft »

Triv888 wrote: post #44
jjcon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mom forgot her gmail password and no longer had the same mobile number for a reset, the secondary reset option was set to my email but would not send a reset despite this. I’m in a similar position except I know my password. Google decided for whatever reason that my location was too different and now requires that I verify via a phone number I no longer have. I have access to the recovery email and even get ‘su…

I've had that problem too, multiple times, where I knew the password but Google wouldn't let me use it (I almost lost my account). Google doesn't like users that clear cookies, block trackers, etc... I wish that there was a way to disable those "protections".

Do you have 2FA enabled? I suspect that if you have either an authenticator app or a security key, it will use that instead of random heuristics.

(This isn't a defense of Google's behavior, just a comment on things that are actually within the end user's control.)

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