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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

#241

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

weisbaum wrote: post #141

Taking a look at your site, it seems quite clear where all your traffic went. You have a pretty great backlink profile compared to other affiliate sites ive seen but the content is incredibly thin. Based on this, me or anyone else who visits the site just sees an advertising site. There are no personal experiences with the products, the products are not related and the UX does not make the user want to continue explo…

>add more photos

How much does image actually weigh in the site's score? What about the text only websites e.g. PG's essays, not including forums like HN. I would presume PG's blog has great backlink score but would a similar site with same number of backlinks but with several images rank more?(hoping for clarification from an anonymous Googler).

I'm asking this because my text only blog content titled 'Startup ideas vs Problems'[1] was the featured snippet when the search term is 'Startup ideas vs Problems'[2] until recently as the current featured snippet features another website with a featured image within the blog post.

Although my blog is still the first result, but google now suggests 'Did you mean: Startup ideas and Problems' which buries my blog post effectively killing my traffic.

[1]https://hitstartup.com/startup-ideas-vs-problems/

[2]https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Startup%20ideas%20vs%2...

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#242

Post by lazyjones »

Perhaps it has something to do with various resources not loading?

  https://sourcemaps.squarespace.net/universal/scripts-compressed/cldr-resource-pack-3e6d18ccbc01a401a2e61-min.en-US.js.map
and a couple of others... (reason: doesn't resolve for me)

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#243

Post by fogihujy »

maccard wrote: post #235
nly wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is this a mobile (cell) phone number? Why is this tied to where you live? In the UK you can take your mobile number with you between network providers and they're not tied to your location.

Not everyone moves in the same country. I moved from Ireland to the UK 8 years ago and the process of updating phone numbers and addresses is just flat out impossible on certain services.

Not sure about Irish/UK rules regarding this, and it might not be possible everywhere, but if anyone else happens to be in that situation in the future then I can wholeheartedly recommend transferring the old number to a prepaid card, and then simply bringing that along.

That way, you can keep your old number for as long as you keep the SIM topped up (once per year where I lived).

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#244

Post by spacemanmatt »

zionic wrote: post #86
dandare wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-monopoly laws exist for a reason. Splitting Google (and other IT monopolies) is the only remedy their monopolistic behaviour.

This is worse than monopolistic behavior. Show me where old school AT&T acted like this.

Oh, sweet summer child

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#245

Post by Semaphor »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #240
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #8

I’ve had similar experiences with other google products: 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. We had a live session via thunderbird but there were no channels of support. Luckily we were able to register her old mobile number to achieve a password reset, thanks to a helpful phone p…

I have this problem with paypal: Made an account about 10 years ago with email address x, mobile telephone number y, bank debit card z with some security questions thrown in. I cannot remember my password from 10 years ago so I need to reset it. If I try to reset it, they want to send me an sms otp to the mobile number from 10 years ago which I no longer have. Obviously I cannot update the mobile number if I cannot l…

> I cannot remember my password from 10 years ago

> Another thing they offered was for me to fill out the answers to the security questions, but I absolutely hate these and always fill in random characters by mashing my keyboard, so no go here.

This should go as a cautionary tale to always use a password manager. I, too, hate insecurity questions. But instead of mashing keys, I generate unique passwords for them and use the question as a username. Then save them in there as well.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#246

Post by londons_explore »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #241
weisbaum wrote: post #141

Taking a look at your site, it seems quite clear where all your traffic went. You have a pretty great backlink profile compared to other affiliate sites ive seen but the content is incredibly thin. Based on this, me or anyone else who visits the site just sees an advertising site. There are no personal experiences with the products, the products are not related and the UX does not make the user want to continue explo…

>add more photos How much does image actually weigh in the site's score? What about the text only websites e.g. PG's essays, not including forums like HN. I would presume PG's blog has great backlink score but would a similar site with same number of backlinks but with several images rank more?(hoping for clarification from an anonymous Googler). I'm asking this because my text only blog content titled 'Startup ideas…

All modern search engines use neural networks for final ranking. Even the Google employees who work in it wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how much images help or hinder your rankings.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#247

Post by OJFord »

jsnell wrote: post #215
OJFord wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like car manufacturer and car purchase loan provider (if that were something it were offering in-house). We could create our own search engine, funded by showing Google Ads, today; the suggestion is that that Ads business be separate to Google's own Search business which happens to use it, but which might easily (except obviously it doesn't) use Facebook Ads or whatever instead.

You can already create your own search engine, and have Google serve the same ads on it as they would for their own search. I don't know what the product is called, or what the requirements for signing up for it are, but it is how a lot (most?) of the smaller search engines monetize. (I just checked Ask Jeeves and Startpage, and they were both serving ads from Google.)

Yes, that's what I said.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#249

Post by LordAtlas »

jcims wrote: post #82

This comment is way too verbose. First two paragraphs summarize my feelings and the rest is honestly for the site author's consideration as to the experience of a complete stranger to their site. I wish them the best. I was actually moved by the author's plight. Their current situation seems very helpless and I truly respect the effort to swim upstream with a principled approach to delivering a service in a market th…

I concur. The entire thing seems like a low-quality content site. Two-line summarised "reviews" that are at best aggregated reviews from Amazon are not helpful. Contrast with The Wirecutter that also works on a reviews and affiliate income model.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#250

Post by reactchain »

There is a recurring lesson with these type of threads: don't build a business that is dependent on an unstable, black-box algorithm of a mega-corp. If your business is so fragile that an algorithm update by Google causes you to have no customers, then you should have built a business with a bigger moat, brand recognition, etc. It sounds like this business was more of an SEO hack.
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