Google Ranking not changing but traffic is

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   arizonataylorposted 13 years ago

   I have multiple sites that haven't moved a bit.  They're still on the same page, at the same rank, for the same key words.  The traffic for those hubs, particularly one, is down over 80% though!  Any thoughts?  It's never been this low for those sites.  I would understand this if the rank and page had changed, but it hasn't.

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      Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Are you sure your pages are still on the same page? Google customizes searches for each person. So if you look at your own site a lot it shows your site higher than others.
      
      Try searching for your keywords and pages using Scroogle:
      http://scroogle.org/

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         snakebabyposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         What is quite interesting to know, and a bit hard to believe. What is scroogle?

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            Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Scroogle is simply a site where you can type in a keyword or phase and it will show you what position it is in, minus your personal search patterns that Google puts on everyone.

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         wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Bill, how accurate is this when comparing to google results?
         
         The reason I ask is that when I search for a keyword common to several of my niche hubs they come up at 5,6 and 7 with a xomba backlink at 12.  Google shows one at 7, the backlink on page 3 and the others are gone. 
         
         My google traffic for these three has gone from well over 100/day to about 15, which fits with google but not with scroogle.

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            Bill Manningposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Normally Scroogle is pretty accurate. However because of the sudden changes the last few days it very well could be that it is not accurate right now.
            
            I'd wait a few more days and check it again and see what you get.

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               wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Good point, and I'll bet you are correct - scroogle simply hasn't caught up with the changes yet.  Unless of course, it simply does a google search without personal parameters and reports those, whereupon it should be right.

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               snakebabyposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               I still have hard time to believe google search results show your personal patterns. I've searched a lot for keywords related to my hubs or sites, but absolutely no ranking for any of them ever changed because of my own behavior. For example, when search for gift ideas, my site has been on 7th, 5th, 4th, and 5th, then completely disappeared, then showed up again on around 4th, now it is on 2nd page. No matter how much I want my sites to be on top, no matter how many times I clicked on them under particular keywords, no change, period! One site simply disappeared one day after I clicked on the it, then magically reappeared some days later without me doing a thing. So I found this "personal pattern" thing highly unreliable.

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                  rmcrayneposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm sure no expert, but seems to me that your post somehow supports the point you are trying to counter.

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                     snakebabyposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     Happy to see little support . I randomly thought about it more, to me it makes no sense at all. google robot doesn't read your mind, clicks have never helped in any ways. Not sure where Bill got that idea from.

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                        ThomasEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                        They personalize it to YOUR browsing habits. The google results you see are different to everyone else... depending on what you have searched for in the past.
                        
                        What you do doesn't really affect the SERPs for anyone else though, as far as I can see.

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                           snakebabyposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                           But how does google know which one is your site? Does it base on the number of times you click on your own web site regardless if keywords used or not and what? I'm confused, not sure what to think now. A more detailed explanation on how google sorts things out with personal search patterns would help a lot.

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                              ThomasEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                              It knows your IP address, and records the previous sites you have visited through google. It doesn't need to know you own the site, it simply promotes in the listing sites you regularly visit via google, or sites like the sites you have visited in the past.
                              
                              These days, every search result is customized by the previous searches google has recorded for you.
                              
                              This is even more the case if you are logged into your google account.

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                                 snakebabyposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                                 Thanks, Thomas, interesting to know, and personally I don't think it is necessary to have this extra process. How many sites do we really regularly visit? At least I always just do a fresh search, and hope to see something new or better. Well, if the results get reorganized because of the previous search behaviors, then it is more difficult for me to see new results. The sites we visited may not be the ones we liked.

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      BaliMermaidposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      The day the Google Farmer Mod took affect my best hubs traffic tanked with a loss of 85% - BUT their position on the search results was still number 1 on page 1 !
      
      Revenue down by 45% so with such conflicting results hard to tell what the heck is going on.
      
      BUT THEN
      
      One and one-half days later - those same Hubs traffic went through the roof with one of them being over 2300 visits in 24 hrs at this moment.
      
      Position 1 and 1 still - Revenue up 48%.
      
      So it appears to be what ever they did is like balancing on a fulcrum point and I hope it does not keep going back and forth - no complaint if it stays on the up side all the time

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      Susana Sposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I've seen a similar thing. For the first few days after the update it seemed that the various google data centres were showing widely varying and inaccurate results (don't know if they have caught up yet). We were checking results and one person would see a number 1, someone else would see a number 3, another person nuumber 10 and yet others at different positions. They were all over the place.
      
      That could be down to personalised results and/or people being signed into their google account but for well over a year I've made sure that everything relating to google collecting data from me is unchecked, because personalised search results can skew things.
      
      Anyway, one thing I definitely did notice was that I'd only lost ranking for some search terms. So if you've got hubs that previously ranked high for more than one phrase, then you might find you're now only ranking high for one of them. You can try and check on your hub stats - keywords - click through to google and see where you are on the results for them. Might not be wholly accurate as things still seem to be moving around, but you'll get some clues.
      
      @snakebaby Some info on personalised search:  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/ … ryone.html
      
      There's also a link to a study on the kind of changes personalised searches can make on this page

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      kschangposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I've found that my overall hubpages traffic is down about 20%. It was in the 1400-1500 range. A few days ago it was down below 1000, then it's back up to 1200.
      
      My formerly top hub, usually about 250 hits a day, is down to under 100. However, the other hubs seem to have all increased traffic SLIGHTLY.

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   David 470posted 13 years ago

   My 24 hour traffic continues to fall down. Its definitely about 50% now. I'm trying not to get disappointed about all this cause its not something I directly did, and it has affected many hubbers, and people from other sites..
   
   Perhaps google's algorithm did something else besides change ranks, or it could be random?

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   melporposted 13 years ago

   My traffic increased greatly today and is back to normal. I am still seeing a drop in the number clicks I generally receive.

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      TahoeDocposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Mel, I was just looking at the same thing. My traffic was never that impressive, but definitely went down about 50%. Now it's back up (even organic, google traffic, not from other countries only), but I've had zero clicks over the last few days. I never got a ton, but I'd have had at least a few in that amount of time?? Wonder what's up with that. I'd have thought the clicks would follow the traffic.

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   IzzyMposted 13 years ago

   My click rate has taken a severe tumble too.

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      David 470posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      My ctr has always been fairly bad, but it seems worse now. I don't know if the Google algorithm contributed to this or not.

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         earnestshubposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         My ctr took a dive, but is back again.

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      Peggy Wposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Mine is definitely down also.

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   Hestia DeVotoposted 13 years ago

   As a relatively new hubber who doesn't have a lot of hubs, I've seen almost no change in my traffic or earnings despite all the Google shuffling.  I find that interesting.

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   TopUniverseposted 13 years ago

   My google.com traffic is lower for more than 60% when compared to last week traffic.
   
   There is no change in the other traffic sources.

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7. 81

   Avamumposted 13 years ago

   I hate to sound like a broken record, but my traffic is down as well - about 30% today...just one day after I heaved a huge sigh of relief as my traffic remained satisfactory over the weekend so I thought I somehow escaped the Google algorithm thing.  Apparently not!

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      David 470posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Maybe your traffic is better on weekends. Personally, mine usually is.

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   Mishaposted 13 years ago

   There are other search engines around, namely Bing and Yahoo, and traffic from them could easily overpass Google in some cases...

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   michifusposted 13 years ago

   @snakebaby - To give you an example of a heart stopping moment I have just had, and my growing dislike of Google Chrome.
   
   One of my hubs is sitting at 2 in Google in IE, Firefox and Safari. As it should, why should any search engine pull different results? Well Google Chrome positions this at really odd positions, and my last check had it at 6th, but over the past few days its been really erratic, but has been for about a month, certainly pre algorithm change.  If I search on Chrome in incognito mode, it gives it the same position as the other search engines, therefore the results it shows are variable, which must be to do with my search patterns which it gets from my history/ip address/whatever. Personally Im fed up with it deciding what I want to see and what  dont.
   
   Ive stopped using it, as the results that it brings up based on what it thinks I want to see are utter rubbish.

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