To Goog Almighty: how do I get my search traffic back?
I am not going to nag about how my search traffic has dropped off to virtually nothing.
I’m sure I deserve it.
One can hardly pretend to know better than a few hundred Google engineers, Pandas or Penguins, right?
Only a month ago I was about to post on having reached 8.000 monthly visitors and 12.000 page views, which I think is a lot for a niche site like this one.
Good thing I didn’t...
On April 24 my browser hits dropped off to 98, compared to 204 on the previous day and then kept dropping off to reach an all-time low of 4, on June 22.
By now, Flickr is well on its way to replace G. Almighty as my most important referrer.
Maybe I should not have bashed them as I did in a previous article, but still: what’s true is true.
Google reps have been going on and on about “capital sins”, such as keyword stuffing, over-optimizing SEO and bad external links, among others, none of which I am guilty of – as far as I know.
They also talk about “Quality Content” and a better “User Experience”.
Those are very big and very generic words, and the Goog does not go into detail on what that means – much like praying to the true Almighty goes mostly unanswered.
Although I honestly believe I create quality content, my visitors may not think so, and that would lead the big Goog not to believe so either; fair enough.
It might turn out that my capital sin is to try to keep you informed.
I don’t need you to click through – I’m not selling anything – and I don’t care if you drop out after you read what you needed to know, because that’s what I’m here for.
I’m sure the lack of comments and the 85% bounce-rate do not help me much, either…
Still, and even if this may be nothing for them big-ass sites, most of the posts rack(ed) up over a 1.000 views a couple of weeks after posting and a few have between 20.000-40.000 in their lifetime, like these:
Nikon's Greatest Hits
Raw Converter Comparison
Nikon Cameras and ACR Compatibility
EN-EL3e False Low Battery Warning
Nikon D40 and 18-55 mm lens Review
Digital Dictionary (ES)
That said, and even if Spanish visitors make up roughly half of my audience, none of those posts – except the digital dictionary – are even close to hitting the 10.000 mark.
So, maybe I should just get rid of them?
Here is the news: I won’t. Not even for G. Almighty, I won’t.
In the end it’s not that I’m complaining about Big G. rolling out new algorithms, but rather about how they do absolutely NOTHING to educate content generators – and Adsense partners – on how to create what they believe is “Quality Content” and a better “User Experience”.
On how they do absolutely nothing to keep us in the loop, on how they keep refusing on posting clear guidelines on what they want from us.
Believe me: I’ve been Googling (yeah, I know...) the issue until my head dropped off, but there is nothing to be found except some posts from an astoundingly cocky content control engineer (Wysz) telling us that we’re doing it all wrong.
He just sits there in his darn Ivory Tower and tells us that we’re all just generating annoying, useless *BS* for our audiences.
The question is, of course: how can he alone be right and about 12% of the total Internet population be wrong...
I believe that Google’s arrogance and their bl**dy, cocky engineering attitude are going to bite them in the ass, one day.
The kind of resentment we see in the “Do you think you’re affected by the algorithm change” forum has brought entire empires down.
It is no casualty that G. Almighty isn’t even in this ranking for Social Receptiveness nor that they are now outranked in “Sociagility” by Apple, who themselves – let’s be honest – are not exactly sociable to start with...
Just my 2 cts.
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