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I got dumped by Google. Now what?

Google Breakup

I can still remember when Google and I were BFFs. I spent my time creating content and feeding Google. In return, Google sent me traffic. We were both happy and things were good. Then, without notice, Google dumped me.

Now I didn’t cheat on Google and I wasn’t doing spammy things behind their back. I follow the rules and thought all was good.

August 16th, out of nowhere, it all went downhill; and kept going.

Google Analytics

Impressions in Blue. Clicks in Red.

Google impressions dropped 62%! When you don’t have impressions, then you don’t have traffic. And when I don’t have traffic, I feel sad.

I’ve been obsessing over my Google Webmaster data looking for any signs of an issue. I came up with a few small things and fixed them. I also found out that Google recently put emphasis on structured data, so I added more of that as well.

Seems that no matter what I do, Google and I still haven’t made up. Why won’t you return my impressions?!

On the positive side, I can now make changes to my site and not worry about freaking out Google. I’ve been wanting to do a re-design for a while now so maybe it’s a good time. I can also re-structure things and see what happens.

On the negative side, I really like writing content that helps people. If no one can find my posts, I lose some of my motivation.

I keep hoping that I’ll find something that will give me insights into what went wrong. I keep hoping that Google will be my friend again and that my stats will go up tomorrow. Only time will tell and the waiting is killing me!


3 Responses

  1. James Huff says:

    It doesn’t look like they completely forgot about you. Have you tried Google Authorship? We should have support similar to this built into Jetpack soon too.

    • Thomas says:

      I’ve added additional authorship tags to my site. Maybe I just need to wait a bit longer and Google will find all my changes and think I’m cool again. 🙂

      • James Huff says:

        I hope so. The idea is that Google is lately punishing bot sites more than human sites. Nothing should say “I’m human” to them more than authorship tags connected to a Google+ profile.

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