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.
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!
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.
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. 🙂
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.