: Any ideas why my Google search traffic dropped considerably after 29th Oct 2013? I've noticed a sizable dip in traffic with www.topomap.co.nz so headed over to Google Webmaster Tools to see if

@Bryan171

One thing that Google has talked about doing is to "penalize" websites that do not have text that's immediately visible by your users. They may finally have figured out that your site hides all that information to end users. (What you have in your Info tab is hidden by default.)

Of course, any website with just images, videos, or like you, maps, are not a good thing to be found with such a scheme. I guess that one way would be for you to leave the tab open by default and see what happens.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Goswami781

Google is making all kinds of changes right now (as always) with Hummingbird, Encrypted Search and Penguin 2.1 so those would be good places to start searching (if you aren't familiar already).

I didn't look very closely but I notice you solicit advertisers, do you add the rel="nofollow" attribute to what could be construed as 'paid links?'

Google (via Penguin) has been really cracking down on links that violate their webmaster guidelines, and sites that sell and/or buy paid links are both liable to be punished. Review who links to you and who you link to, especially links that pass PageRank.

Here's a YouTube video (one of many) where Matt Cutts discusses Google's thinking on paid links and advertisements.

No idea if that is the case but a drop that big looks like a penalty of some sort.

Vote Up Vote Down