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Google Dropping Blogs?

by Paul on February 17th, 2005

Has anyone else noticed a bad trend going on? I mean the fact that you are getting less and less traffic from Google to your blogs? I have noticed it and it seems a couple of other bloggers have as well.

I went to DigitalPoint and used their fine collection of Webmaster tools to see how some of my keywords were doing for my sites and a large majority of them have dropped off the map completely. This is not good for anyone.

I can understand Google trying to put less emphasis on blogs due to comment spam, but punishing quality content will only cause good writers to have less incentive to write. No search engine hits equals no revenue. That equals no fun blogging (yes it is more fun blogging and making money than blogging and not making money).

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POSTED IN: SEO

16 opinions for Google Dropping Blogs?

  • Hayo Bethlehem
    Feb 17, 2005 at 6:06 pm

    Not at all for me, in fact, on my site referrals from google have been going up and up. I posted a lot of new content at the start of this week. Two days later I was getting google referrals from that content.

  • amine
    Feb 17, 2005 at 6:15 pm

    i have a question about links & google!! will bunch of links coming from one domain name help you get a better ranking. ??
    …

  • Tim
    Feb 17, 2005 at 6:37 pm

    How can they target blogs specifically? What is defined as a blog and how would a googlebot tell it apart from an article site?

    Secondly, you yourself said that relying on search engine traffic is bad. So, why are you worrying about search engine traffic? :)

  • Scrivs
    Feb 17, 2005 at 8:28 pm

    Ah, I was waiting for someone to point that out Tim. Relying on it is bad when it comes to affiliate sites and ecommerce type sites, but when it comes to blogs I think a large number of them depend a great deal on SE traffic because that is how they are found.

    Sure it’s best not to rely on it and make sure to diversify your traffic, but how many people do you know are going to put AdWords up on Google just to get traffic to their site?

    This is also bad because I think blogs can provide the most useful results when it comes to certain searches. I am sure Google has the ability to filter out blogs due to something, of course this is what people like me do…worry.

    amine: A bunch of links from just one domain will help some depending on the ranking of that site, but you need plenty of links to see any good results for your site.

  • Darren Rowse
    Feb 17, 2005 at 11:06 pm

    It isn’t just a blog thing in my opinion. Two months ago Google did an update and I lost two thirds of my traffic and all my major SERPs for my main keywords. In the past couple of weeks they’ve done another update and my traffic came back but at the same time two of my friends lost all their traffic (they are not blogs).

    Looks like Google are doing some tweaking of their algorithm - some speculate its got to do with duplicate content, others to do with internal links within sites…others just have no idea.

  • John Nunemaker
    Feb 17, 2005 at 11:31 pm

    I have definitely noticed a drop in google. I have also noticed an increase in Yahoo and MSN. Search engines are definitely interesting.

    As a developer, blogs are an excellent source when I get stumped. If google is somehow putting less of an emphasis on blogs, I’m going to be switching to MSN or Yahoo. That is for sure.

  • hudson
    Feb 18, 2005 at 9:26 am

    Is it because the rel=”nofollow” tag is finally taking affect? Blogs are losing their pagerank because all the links to them in the blogsphere no longer help inflate the site’s search engine ranking:

    http://www.studio2f.com/misc/2005/01/19relnofollow.php

  • Bryan
    Feb 18, 2005 at 9:56 am

    That no follow is a possibility.

    I guess its also possible for the SE, especially google, to figure out whether a blog is run by MT or wordpress, etc…

    Maybe they are giving less importance to sites that appear to be using the MT blogging software.

    I don’t think its right to do that, but its a theory :)

  • chrispian
    Feb 18, 2005 at 3:27 pm

    I second what Darren has said. Some of my sites (including blogs) have improved lately while others have taken major hits. This latest update is big, on the order of the “Florida” update big. I don’t think it has anything specific to do with blogs.

  • Michael Moncur
    Feb 19, 2005 at 12:46 pm

    I haven’t noticed any unusual changes. Some of my sites are up, others down, weblogs or not…

    Remember that rel=nofollow only affects links from COMMENTS, not blogrolls or other typical links from weblogs, and only on those sites that have implemented it–very few at this point, I’d say. So I doubt that’s the issue unless you get LOTS of your incoming links from comments.

  • James
    Feb 19, 2005 at 7:10 pm

    I haven’t noticed any changes either.

    I think it’s just that Google’s being retarded in general, atm–and for the last little while, too.

  • James Archer
    Feb 21, 2005 at 11:23 pm

    I’ve noticed some significant changes. my personal site and my business site (both blog-based) have taken a nose-dive in the rankings.

    I have a friend who’s an SEO pro (not the sleazy kind), and he said that it’s probably just some new sandboxing formulas that took effect during Google’s recent “Allegra” update, and that I should just tough it out.

    As I understand it, “sandboxing” is what Google does to new sites until they’ve earned their place in the rankings. Even new sites that have generated a ton of links can still sit at the bottom of the rankings for weeks or months until they get out of the sandbox.

    This might just overlap with blogs (hence the perception that blogs are being penalized) because there are so many new blogs that many (or most) of them are still in the sandbox.

  • Rick Blythe
    Feb 22, 2005 at 3:02 pm

    I have seen a siginificant drop in Adsense revenue on my older, better established blog Since Feb. My new blog is still in the sandbox :(

  • blogger@work
    Mar 3, 2005 at 5:13 am

    Что-то с Гуглом моим стало…

    Возник с недавнего времени странный эффект, касающийся посетителей моих блогов, приходящих с Google. Они исчезли. На старых блогах, которые с…

  • Mazoo
    Mar 3, 2005 at 5:42 am

    That’s true! I have noticed such tendency in my blogs, but have decided that it only my imagination :)
    It happens in my russian-language blog too. Now Google bring the three times less visitors than russian search engines, although in 2004 they brought the equal amount of visitors.

  • Ben
    Mar 22, 2005 at 4:31 pm

    Yeah I got crushed, too — most of my pages are out of the index. MSN & Yahoo are still linking, but Google dumped me completely. And I was even using Blogger thinking that would earn me points. :(

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