Sudden Traffic Loss: What To Do When Google Shuts You Down

Most of us rely on Google for the bulk of our traffic and the success of our websites. So if we wake up one day to find that Google has all but stopped sending traffic our way, it is cause for panic and immediate action.

First, figure out what is going on.

In many cases, traffic loss might be due to the normal fluctuation of the Google index, also known as the Google Dance, which happens every few months. In such a case, traffic will likely be restored in a few days. However, traffic loss can also be a result of something that your website might be doing wrong. Some of these possible offenses include:

1. Offering Paid Links. This is one of the biggest no-no’s when it comes to Google. If you do engage in this practice, your site could be reported and your pagerank stripped.
2. Comment Spam. Believe it or not, you may be subject to any spam which is submitted on your blog or forum. So it is important to filter out any questionable comments. If you have a popular website, we suggest using some sort of third-party spam filter or captcha system.
3. Bad External Links. Be careful who you link to. In Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, it explicitly states: avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
4. Automatic or Programmatic Queries. If you are using some external software to check your status or submit new pages, you are probably doing more harm than good.
5. Other errors? There are so many things that can cause Google to stop your flow of traffic. And a guess and check approach often takes quite some time to work. Instead, we suggest using a tool that Google supplies free of charge to webmasters called Google Webmaster Tools. Using this package, you can get regular updates of any errors that Google has encountered when indexing your website. Some additional features include sitemap submission, common search queries, feedback on meta tags, and more.

It is also important to ensure that there is indeed a problem. Verify that your analytics software has not had any reporting issues and that your web server has not been down or inaccessible for any period of time.

Second, take action.

Once you have determined the problem, it is important to take action right away. This will ensure that you get back into Google’s good graces as quickly as possible.

If in addition to traffic loss, you have noticed that pagerank has been lost, it is possible that your website has been banned or that you have been assessed a Google penalty. In this case, once changes are made, you will need to contact Google and request reconsideration.

Google is your livelihood, so it is important to avoid doing anything that may jeopardize website rankings. For additional information on what not to do, see our article, Black Hat SEO: 6 Ways To Get Your Website Banned.