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How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

jitbit.com

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Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#111

Post by jitbit »

uts_ wrote: post #108
jitbit wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, the original post author here. Hundreds of thousands of paid links? Excuse me? We do NOT pay for links. The only thing I can imagine has initiated Penguin - we sell web-software (forum software, helpdesk software etc) that has a footer link "powered by XXX". We dis see this affected our rankings a year ago and we're still trying to recover (making those links "nofollow" trying to contact the linking webmasters et…

Sorry but I don't buy it. You're telling me these links don't look paid to you (and this is an example of just the first page): http://www.webhostingsearch.com/web-tools.php - Spammy footer link http://jack-fx.com/ - Spammy blog roll links http://www.helpdesk2000.org/ - More spammy blog links http://www.chat-software.org/ - Spammy footer links http://www.cloudcomputing-providers.com/ - Spam network links in blog post…

I don't see the spammy footer link on the 1st one. The page title is "useful web tools" and we have a link in the body part... I don't understand.

Also, what makes you think a blog roll is always "spammy"? The second one seem to be a blog about ASP.NET, the author recommending our software... There are plenty of review people post about our software: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVuB3oGr5pw here's a video review of our Jitbit Crm for example...

.. but anyways, I guess you ARE right, we do have to disavow all these links and contact webmasters so they remove it. Not sure if this the seo-guys we hired who screwed us up, or the result of negative seo (unlikely, but who knows)

PS. feels kinda uncomfortable when everyone's investigating my site, my backlinks, you know my name, my blog, even my home address from whois records, but I know nothing about you. Just some "uts_" guy on HN. Justsayin... It's like you're naked on a scene, everyone sees you, but you see nothing because of the lights :((

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#112

Post by jitbit »

uts_ wrote: post #108
jitbit wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, the original post author here. Hundreds of thousands of paid links? Excuse me? We do NOT pay for links. The only thing I can imagine has initiated Penguin - we sell web-software (forum software, helpdesk software etc) that has a footer link "powered by XXX". We dis see this affected our rankings a year ago and we're still trying to recover (making those links "nofollow" trying to contact the linking webmasters et…

Sorry but I don't buy it. You're telling me these links don't look paid to you (and this is an example of just the first page): http://www.webhostingsearch.com/web-tools.php - Spammy footer link http://jack-fx.com/ - Spammy blog roll links http://www.helpdesk2000.org/ - More spammy blog links http://www.chat-software.org/ - Spammy footer links http://www.cloudcomputing-providers.com/ - Spam network links in blog post…

Followup: Yeah... I even found links to my site from porn sites... Guess we have to spend weeks with the disavow tool.. In hopes that google will take te penalty down. What tool have you used to discover the backlinks? I will need it...

PS. why can't I just BE A CODER! :(

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#113

Post by marlowe »

jitbit wrote: post #112
uts_ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I don't buy it. You're telling me these links don't look paid to you (and this is an example of just the first page): http://www.webhostingsearch.com/web-tools.php - Spammy footer link http://jack-fx.com/ - Spammy blog roll links http://www.helpdesk2000.org/ - More spammy blog links http://www.chat-software.org/ - Spammy footer links http://www.cloudcomputing-providers.com/ - Spam network links in blog post…

Followup: Yeah... I even found links to my site from porn sites... Guess we have to spend weeks with the disavow tool.. In hopes that google will take te penalty down. What tool have you used to discover the backlinks? I will need it... PS. why can't I just BE A CODER! :(

Use Google Webmaster Tools and Download the latest links file.

You can also take a look at Ahrefs, Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. All of those require a subscription though. You will most likely be fine just using link data provided from Google itself.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#114

Post by Matt_Cutts »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #74
mattmanser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still #1 when I search and that's not even what he's talking about. He's claiming that having a G+ picture inserted next to search results is resulting in a much lower CTR than they previously had. Which I think is plausible as it detracts from the search experience, I often skip those results as the text isn't lined up so I can't scan it properly. Wish you could turn them off, it's really off putting. I also wonder…

I'm traveling, so it will be a while before I can check with the team, but the initial message that kicked off his investigation referred to clicks to his site, which I believe can include overall traffic to his site. I'll double-check when I'm back from traveling though. I was also responding to the overall headline of his site ("How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%") because there are other reasons fo…

Just to follow up on this: I did check with the team, and the message that Jitbit received ("Search results clicks for http://www.jitbit.com/xxxxxxxx/ have decreased significantly") pertains to the amount of clicks per day, not clickthrough.

In other words, the message that Jitbit received--and that sparked this article--meant that Jitbit was getting less overall traffic from Google, not that clickthroughs had gone down. That's consistent with the site being affected by Penguin as well.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#115

Post by flaktrak »

kanamekun wrote: post #27
spindritf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Google will only show a "recognizable headshot,"[1] not any image you give them. So you cannot use a logo. [1] https://plus.google.com/authorship

This is 100% right. A quick confirmation: "John Mu of Google has confirmed that you must have a headshot of yours in order to see your Google Plus avatar in Google’s rich snippet." source: http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/log...

In fact I have mug shotted my posts before and if you switch the picture to a picture of something other than a face Google seems to penalize you.

Was an interesting experiment and one that I would like to take further.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#116

Post by mattmanser »

jitbit wrote: post #106
mattmanser wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is admittedly bad and rather annoyingly he doesn't seem to show the actual results for the page he was talking about. Rather ironically at the moment it seems to be one of the best indicators that the article is farm spam and should be ignored. Apart from when I see your handsome face or Scott Hanselman's of course! Personally, I dislike the feature and wish I could turn it off for my search results, it a…

>>he doesn't seem to show the actual results for the page he was talking about (post author here) I did post the screenshot of the results page, it includes my page, not hiding anything

You might miss this now as it's late, but the screen shot of your traffic results doesn't include the page '/macro-recorder' in the section titled 'It's not that simple'. That's the page you were talking about in the paragraphs above in the article, that's the page that's still number 1 in google when I search and still has your screenshot next to it when I search for 'macro recorder'.

It's the crux of your argument and it's completely missing, it's the only relevant page, everything else is almost completely irrelevant.

I'm not at all disbelieving you, but I'm also honestly saying you don't really seem to understand the scientific method if you think what you published is good enough to support what you've claimed. It's a half finished investigation, the facts are completely inconclusive.

And that's what undermines a lot of SEO experts opinion still today. Speculation without fact. Your post at the moment is plausible but without the most important serious fact. What traffic were you getting before the picture appeared for that one page, and what traffic were you getting after the picture was added. Can you confirm that you didn't change the meta description or title at all?

Everything else is a distraction to the most basic scientific method and that is what makes the article bad, you've conflated a bunch of different 'symptoms' with one hypothesis.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#118

Post by seosoldiers »

Ask Matt Cutts why so many hacked page can rank well and stay long time in google. look the result: https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&output=search&sc...

so many small business website owener use hacked website then building a new page, ranking keywords and get traffic from google. why they are not hit by google new update. and another question, if this tech working, they are many junk result show in google.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#119

Post by _k »

jitbit wrote: post #112
uts_ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I don't buy it. You're telling me these links don't look paid to you (and this is an example of just the first page): http://www.webhostingsearch.com/web-tools.php - Spammy footer link http://jack-fx.com/ - Spammy blog roll links http://www.helpdesk2000.org/ - More spammy blog links http://www.chat-software.org/ - Spammy footer links http://www.cloudcomputing-providers.com/ - Spam network links in blog post…

Followup: Yeah... I even found links to my site from porn sites... Guess we have to spend weeks with the disavow tool.. In hopes that google will take te penalty down. What tool have you used to discover the backlinks? I will need it... PS. why can't I just BE A CODER! :(

Did the SEO agency you hired get you those backlinks ?

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#120

Post by jitbit »

_k wrote: post #119
jitbit wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Followup: Yeah... I even found links to my site from porn sites... Guess we have to spend weeks with the disavow tool.. In hopes that google will take te penalty down. What tool have you used to discover the backlinks? I will need it... PS. why can't I just BE A CODER! :(

Did the SEO agency you hired get you those backlinks ?

Which ones? The ones above? I'm not sure. Will have to contact them and get back.

I think, the links we're being penalised for - are mostly the links that come from our software widget. Check out this page, the very-very top of it: http://algonac.thebestcityguides.com/Forum/forum4195-Minneol...

We have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS links like this (I'mm looking at my WMT right now). I guess this is the main reason. Our site is hit by Penguin...

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