Does Google Hate Competition? You Decide…
It’s been about a month since I added a very specific “Last Minute Auctions” section to one of my niche websites that uses a phpBay backend, on top of WordPress. (Not the Coupon Auctions page at Kim’s site, a different site) The site is very utlra-tightly focused in a niche market with little to no competition, and up until 2 weeks ago, was hitting about 8500 daily pageviews and performing very well! Then I added 2 very specific and measurable things to the site… a Last Minute Auctions section consisting of 10-12 pages, and then Google Webmaster Tools… both within 2 weeks!
The site is 100% unique content and has a great following of RSS subscribers! Most of the posts are in the 300-1000 word range, are very timely and niche specific, and its actually a market I have alot of experience with, so its not just a bullshit site will filler articles.
The Image Tells the Story
As you can see in the image below… I added the Auction section, which was a very specific and niche focused series of 10-12 pages, showing 18 listings that were expiring within 1-2 days and had at least one bid. In other words, they were in demand items (Had bids) that were ending very soon and would most definitely sell!
Following along the search engine guidelines of excluding useless content, I made every effort to be sure search spider would not end up inside this section. I added a robot exclusion to the robots.txt file and even went as far as adding the robots exclusion, noindex,nofollow metatag to the head section of the auction pages… In other words, I did not want to get the pages indexed, I simply wanted to send my existing traffic into them.
Along with adding the auctions pages, I promoted them on a few social networks I always use… as well as adding a highly visible section to the top section of the website, leading visitors into the different sections. I received feedback from visitors on how cool they were, how much they liked them, and how useful they were for finding last minute deals on exactly what they came looking for – in other words – they were a HIT with visitors!
Added Google Webmaster Tools
Around 1-2 weeks into having the pages on the site, I added the site to my Google Webmaster Tools profile. This is something I have been hesitant to do on ANY site since I was able to track this same action to sites being deindexed last year… but I gave Google the benefit of the doubt, and added the site anyway. I wanted to be sure the pages were not being indexed and GWT gives you the ability to see which pages are blocking spiders, etc.
It only took a few days of GWT being added to the site that traffic hit the gutter!
My Questions
The biggest questions I have about this are:
- Does Google Hate Auctions due to the Competition?
Its no secret that eBay is one of Adwords biggest spenders! Pick a product and look at the sponsored results, 9 out of 10 times, you will find an eBay AdWords ad on the page! In the case of these niche sites, if WE get the traffic, then the browsing public is just not clicking on those Google Adwords and thus Google loses money. Regardless of the fact that the site is very authoritative and popular in the niche, if its taking money out of Google pocket… well, you know the rest. - Does Using Google Webmaster Tools Bring Along a Penalty?
Since last year, I have been very wary of using GWT. I am not alone in this thought and many people share the same reservations about using GWT. - Finally – What Good are the Robots.txt and NoIndex metatag system if G does what it wants Anyway?
Following the guidelines with the search engine exclusions, why did these factors have ANY effect on the site at all? I mean, I was very clear in telling G and other engines.. Hey, don’t index this stuff, its not any good for the result pages.
This week – I removed the direct links to the auction pages and this morning, removed the GWT file from the host and dropped it off of my main account.
Was it the Auctions or GWT That Caused the Fail?
Quite literally – these two actions are the ONLY changes I made on the site in the last 30 days. Posting has remained constant and useful to readers.
Traffic from other engines has remained constant and on track with the same increase rate I have seen for several months and Google is the only engine to have a drop in referred traffic. I will let you know what happens in a few weeks…
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Google Now Using Speed as a Ranking Factor
- Soft 404′s in Google Webmaster Tools
- 9 Complete Failures in the New Google Mayday Search Results
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Wow – Mark – that sucks! You did everyting right and Google still put you in the poo pan!
It seems brutally unfair when you’re telling the spiders that those new sections aren’t good for searches yet you still get penalized. What’s a boy to do?
You’d think that Google’s focus would (should?) be on getting people to relevant information, not just throwing eBay AdWords at them.
No fair!
It will be interesting to see if your traffic returns after making those changes, but difficult to make a direct correlation. I’ve wondered if noindex nofollow tags mean anything. Howie Schwartz says he has tested with and without and finds no significant difference. He gets pages with such tags on the first page of results. Google, go figure.
I have a site that gets great traffic from G and I was ranking on page 1 with a keyword phrase and was happy… it stayed there for a while then fell to page 3..(sad)
I kept doing the blogs with a vengence and backlinking as usual and then in a couple of weeks it came back to page 1 and most of the time it stays there now… This might just be a coincidence
It has been in my GWT for 8 months now.. with a wp front end and a bans back…
but as for some of my other sites… the same that happened to you is the case with them… which is BS from G if you ask me..
We all try to make new posts and keep them fresh and then we get some punishment…
Google Tools = Conspiracy Theory. I feel your pain, if in fact what you saying is happening. They want in to take a peek.
I had a couple of sites get the ‘slap’. I have been using Adwords and once I added Google Analytics to a site I was using Adwords with, my bids got the slap and ended with low quality scores. Nonetheless, it is now broken and can’t be repaired because Google now see’s it as a low quality site and ad campaign.
It’s the ol’ saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But I was just trying to make it better.
Also tried the tools on another site that had a budget of 20K a month budget and it got a low quality score once I used the Google Keyword tools to find some more keywords to my campaign. The campaign was running for 16 months, then once I wanted to search the niche and add some more keywords, the account was slapped with a low quality score. I had a 3.9% CTR. Even making a call to a Google Adwords account rep to reactivate the account or see what I could do to fix the issue didn’t do any good. Told me to redesign my site to have a more of a shopping comparison feel. I spent $355K over that period of time with them and they still didn’t want my money – give me a break. There are some shitty sites that advertise on Google Adwords – and lots with freaking trademark names in the domain. I had customized my sites pretty good to make them look and have different listings than other sites in the same niche. If it makes someone go ‘oooh – ah’ it must be good. But they said I wasn’t adding to the end user experience, whatever, maybe Yahoo or MSN will take my money for the Ad Spend and I’ll invest the rest somewhere’s else.
Funny to come across this today. I have a site that was left on the back burner for many months. When I finely went to it last week I noticed it had a PR of 1. In that week I verified the site with GWT now a week later the site is at PR 0.
I just registered 5 new domains for another project and think I will not even think of adding to GWT.
Maybe web masters should push other so called search engines on their sites and smack back at Google.
A search engine should index all sites on the net, not just the ones they feel are worthy, let the end web surfer decide what they like or do not like.
So once the site is put into GWM tools and they find the site we can’t turn back? That would make every site listed in tools (if theory is correct) useless.
I started using the yahoo site explorer on sites some time ago. I really can’t stand google anymore.
I like bing and yahoo. I see lots of traffic from them after google decides it doesn’t like a site.
Well
reading some of the other comments makes me think about a few things. On July 7th I got a major slap which took out a lot (like 75%)of my sites that had been running adwords great for over a year (like 20% CTR). They still rank ok, for some words… but adwords has decreased the QS to 1.
I have also recently began recently using that new keyword suggest tool in google (as well as putting in GWT)… not sure if its related..(but as I relaunch I will be sure not to touch either). but I am starting to think it is. Funny enough they skipped a few out of the box thin BANS sites.. but took out my wordpress/bans sites instead…
Double check your sites, the word auction probably killed you…and google is definately following those no -follow, no spider links, probably by they killer robot (Since that is the first place a real spammer would hide his stuff — I mean its so blantanly obvious, since only a skilled webmaster would do it.).\
Here is a question for you.
Did you shut down the exisitng site, relaunch on a new domain, with the old content.. minus GWT and the auction stuff.
@ Bruce –
That decrease in QS is sure to result in an increase in ad spend shortly!! Watch out for the G in your wallet!
in ref to changes… No. I am not pulling down the site or making any significant changes for now. I DID pull down the very prominent link menu I had built, and replaced with a simple hover menu int he main navigation bar instead.
Aside from that – I removed the site from GWT…
I assume it will take a full week or two to see what effect the changes may have, but the steady declines in daily traffic have stopped, and it now holds a steady flow again.
Who knows, Maybe I just plugged a leak that will eventually drop off again… Next week will tell the rest of the story.
M
I think you may be micro managing your stats a little bit. Compare week 24 to week 28. Not much of a difference. I see that large spike as a insight to the future of your stats. Initial spike up, then back down, and now which way does it go?
@ Rob –
I know a 3-4 week span is kind of a tight timeframe to measure anything meaningful. Much of the sdrop also occured over the last week of June and into the first week of July, traditionally, the highest vacation month of the year.
The key thing that triggered my concern, was the large gap in google referred traffic during the same time.
Up to that point, G was referring roughly 64% of the search generated traffic, the rest being split among several others. In the drop weeks above, G referrals were down in the 40% range… which led me to them.
I DO agree whole heartedly that 2-4 weeks of stats dont tell the overall picture though, for sure!
Mark
I have to agree with Rob that it’s really too quick to make any conclusions. Google rankings can have big changes – shooting up, dropping down – and then settling in. You may just be experiencing one of those unfortunate drops, especially since you’re in a volatile period
I find myself having some of these reactions myself. We don’t question the big positive jumps – we earned those! – but when the drops come, we’re sure something nefarious is responsible. I know it isn’t pleasant to think about, but it may be the big traffic increase was actually the fluke.
keep on, keeping on. your posts are always thought provoking. thanks.
Hi Mark,
Can you provide an update on this topic? I’d like to know if your stats continued to go down, level off or rise back up. Did you make any changes according to what analytics was providing?
Are you using it in conjunction any sites you build with the N1WAY.
or shoot me an email.
@ Sean –
I will update this with a new post in the morning – but yes, traffic rebounded wonderfully!
I pulled the webmaster tools code – and relocated the auction bar.
Traffic took about 2-3 days to come back, but it came back with purpose, and the site is busier than ever now! (Had the highest volume week, last week)
I will post it up tomorrow.
Mark
Indeed a ridiculously wrong strategy for all the concerned parties: you, google, cunsumer & eBay. But we are with you. I think stats say it all……………..
But is there a way to deal with i?
Sure you can work it out.
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