Up to 90% Massive Drop in Google Search Traffic Worldwide [Case Study]

Case Study on recent Google OutageLooks like Google is acting Cowboy again! Forums are getting crowded daily with questions related to a massive Organic Search traffic drop on sites world wide. Almost all sites are effected be it entertainment based, IT orientated, ecommerce or blogs ran on Wordpress and Blogger. All www domains have been seriously effected by Google with a 50%-90% Cruel Traffic penalty without any prior notice or announcement. Matt Cutts blog and his twitter profile are both deserted and there appears to be no updates on what exactly is happening. Webmasters around the world have been terribly hit by this biggest algorithmic change far bigger than Panda or Penguin. The interesting part to note is, Google blogs, forums and the company employees wont utter a word on what just happened on August 16 and August 21?  
Around half of our clients complained recently about a major drop in their traffic. Since we offer SEO consultancy, its our job to keep these sites well optimized. I was shocked with the figures I received from their Analytics reports. Far bigger surprise was when we noticed all blogs of STC Network being terribly effected with a tremendous loss in traffic for the past few weeks starting from August 16th. Based on the free available tools we have online, following are some reports presented as a brief Case Study that would prove that a major algorithmic change has surely occurred on Google's side which the company is neglecting to answer so far.
UPDATE#1: A Simple Solution has been shared. Please read:
UPDATE#2: Google just announced the reasons what made a search traffic drop:

1. Algoroo

Alogoroo is my favorite tool and it is the only reliable tool I use when observing changes in Google's algorithms. If you observe the chart below, you would see that the Red rectangular bar shooted high on August 16 and August 21. This clearly indicates that Google has surely refreshed their indexed data twice on these days. August 16 is the day when our blog's traffic along with thousand others dropped by 40%.
 algoroo showing major Google algorithm changes

2. SERPS

Serps offers an extremely useful and tracking free tool that shows index volatility for Google and Bing. It gives a much wider information through different volatility charts on monthly and quarterly basis. If you observe the spikes on the chart below then you would notice that the changes in Google's algorithms dates back to even June 28-29 and July 26. Also observe the spikes on 16th and 21st August.
serps spikes showing changes in Search algorithm
PS: Click the image to enlarge.

3. SERPMetrics

SerpMetrics is the most comprehensive tool amongst all because it shows major spikes of Search changes for all major Search engines which include Google, Yahoo and bing. Carefully observe below a major spike on 21st August.
image

4. GoSquared Testimony Proves it all!

Now to prove how badly the algorithmic Change on August 16th effected global traffic then see the chart below which is provided by GoSquared which offers real time analytics for websites. It is a popular service even used by BBC News and The TeleGraph.
GoSquared proved that on August 16th Google was unbelievably down for 5 minutes! People could not access YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, Blogger, Google+ or any service under Google's umbrella. All domains under the company were returning a server error between 23:52 and 23:57 BST on 16th August 2013.
The chart below shows a big drop in the number of pageviews of GoSquare tracking tool on August 16. This indicates that all sites which had the Gosquared script installed were actually receiving no search traffic from Google for exactly 5 minutes and this caused a serious traffic loss for over 40% of all sites using GoSquared. 
Gosquared analytics for 40% drop in global traffic
This is what that proves it all. Google went down for 5 minutes and yet the company neglected to comment on this global outage.

5. Google could not hide it!

After having contacted Google's Webspam team led by matt cutts and waiting for their replys , we could not wait any longer and thought to inform everyone that the above reports are not rumors but facts which Google accepts itself! How?
Google has a utility called AppsStatus that shows status for all sites under Google's root domain. Visiting this tool today convinced me to write this case study. The pink bullets indicate service outage and amazingly you would see a pink bullet next to all services owned by Google between August 16 and August 17. Since our blog is hosted on Blogger.com therefore you would notice that even blogger was down between August 16-17 and this is the main reason which explains why many of BlogSpot users were facing trouble logging into their accounts because the page kept on returning a server error.
google services went down for 5 minutes
PS: Click the image to enlarge.

So what now?

I am sure its not just you who is effected with this latest Google story but indeed all webmasters worldwide including us and all sites under our network. No one knows if this is a service failure on Google's part, or they have encountered a server breakdown or loss of indexed data or they are experimenting with a new Webspam algorithm but no matter whatever it is, it has badly effected all sites worldwide irrespective of the niche and content quality. Some say it is a new Penalty that Google will announce soon for sites sharing Affiliate products or similar. But I strongly disagree to all such claims because most of the sites that we service are entertainment based with not even a single affiliate link. Some even used to say that the traffic drop is because of summer season in WEST but I believe that is not a valid reason because we have never encountered such a massive traffic drop ever in past 5 years. Traffic during summer season is effected by a minor margin of 5-10% but the SERPs loss this time is as high as 90% for some sites which is alarming.
I would share some tips on what to do in order to make sure you recover the lost traffic. Its simply a SEO trial and error experiment that we think could possibly change things to a satisfying level. Stay tuned for our next post on Recovering the lost traffic due to Google outage.
Please share your precious views and tell us any new story that could contribute to the case study above. Do Tell us if you are one of those who are experiencing a Traffic loss for the past few weeks. Your views on this story could help many people.
Peace and blessings buddies.

Disclosure: The above article is just a case study and is not aimed at disclosing any hidden facts or degrading the company. We love Google and it means everything to us. We hope they would sort out this issue soon and would gift back its users all the hard earned traffic.

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77 comments

PLEASE NOTE:
We have Zero Tolerance to Spam. Chessy Comments and Comments with 'Links' will be deleted immediately upon our review.
  1. Salam sir,
    how to get certified as a SEO specialist? I know its an off-topic question, hope you'd guide.

    And about the traffic issue, my site is down to a 90% loss in blog hits. I went through all possible routes to make sure who's fault is this! And i realized my side is clean.

    Let's wait n see

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. W.salam Muhammad Isham,

      The fault this time is not due to incompetent content or poor-optimization on user side but Google has experimented something which has raised many questions. I remember of rumors when they wanted to penalized over optimize sites but saying and detecting the rightful sites is not that easy. The traffic loss this time had been tremendous even to some well quality and optimized sites.
      I am sure this curse would get over soon because more than 23 days have passed but still Google has not talked about anything.

      They also announced Panda and Penguin few weeks later after many sites were hit and I guess they would soon come up with yet another news.

      About Certification in SEO there exits no such thing because Google offers SEM certification but not SEO.

      Anyone can be a certified SEO if he proves it with the social ranking and search ranking of his sites and his online reputation. Our company is now managing SEO of dozens of sites and the blog which you are reading at this moment has just been added to the Tops sites category by Alexa last week which makes it the first biggest contributor to blogger.com and DMOZ had added us 3 years ago. So all these listings proves our SEO efforts and thus won us the title of Certified SEOs :)

      Source:http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools/Publishers/Blogger/



      @Usman
      Buddy check the title tag of your blog. You will find this code just below the opening Head tag. Remove blog*spot string form it and it will solve your problem :)

      Delete
    2. Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai Sir
      I have a question but off the topic. I have read your article about Layload that this is not SEO friendly as well as AdSense score card but on the other hand Page speed also responsible to affecting Page Rank.

      In case of my blog when I add layzy load then my AdSense score card get 4 dot and when I remove lazy load then it turned into one dot. And ultimately I loose visitors due to page loading delay.

      Because i am worried about Page rank as well as traffic.

      So can you kindly suggest me what should I do? Should I keep lazy load plugins or not?

      Delete
  2. My site traffic was 19500 on Sep 3 and then it suddenly dropped to 7300.Don't know what happened

    ReplyDelete
  3. Start removing tags, you will see massive increase in your traffic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Buddy Tags has to do nothing with current traffic loss. Tags if it was a reason then ebay and amazon had been the biggest victims of traffic loss. Tags are good as long as you nofollow them. Please wait for my next post on how to apply some practical ways.

      Delete
  4. Good article! and congrats!, but please admin THERE ARE SPAMMERS IN TOP OF MY COMMENT xD

    ReplyDelete
  5. don't worry keep updating , google itself facing this problem ,hopefully you will be back on track ,,.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just hope this comes true for all of us

      Delete
    2. Dear @Mohammad bro... its been already two month.. pls be superhero for all of our hard working blogger and post the solution.. really bro. . i m highly demotivated and i almost stopped spending time to post..not a single visitor is coming from google search now.. so pls bro.. do something.. i know only u can do.. pls reply me.. may be ur 1 word could motivate me. [Google did it knowingly and they know, if they want to solve then they wud hav done

      Delete
  6. I will keep in mind before posting on my blog,
    Thank You

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nice work Mohammad Brother!
    I have also examining the Google Directory since 26th August when I have lost my 50% traffic suddenly. I have noticed that google has boosted up the biggest and oldest sites after this update or problem. For example, my site www.pcfavour.info is working for digital product reviews as Cnet.com, softonic etc. For some specific keywords, my site was at the top of search rank. Now when I have searched after the 26th August, all bigger sites were at the top position. It seems like as google has done all this itself or their all directory has get backward before 6 months or more.
    The second doze of decrease in traffic (organic) was happened again after September 3 2013, when I have lost again 40% more traffic. I have searched again for my news section's post which was going on top in search results. Now the post was not indexed even in first 4 pages. It through down it at 5th page with same keywords for which it was appearing at 1st page.
    As we all know that if any post get a position at the top then it takes a lot time to disapear from 1st page or never. But in this case Google has done some unexpected changes its indexed do this within some hours. These are my experiences and very little knowledge as I am new in blogging. And one thing I also want to mention that my website is hosted with Wordpress.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Another thing... to change some appearance on Google Search, I have removed Star Rating from my posts. This was caused to remove stars from posts in search and added my profile picture with post. Amazingly, some of my post get back at the 1st page. So you can try to make some changing into your post appearance on Google Search, such as Post Title, Post Meta description etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Whatever you shared makes a lot of sense and I do agree to all. Brother faheem the problem with SERPs result is solely temporaray. A link will stay at top as long as someone elese has not produced a much refered page then yours. If you have a page that stayed on position#1 then it would stay there as long some other post does not receive more backlinks, social votes then yours. So serp position is never fixed and widgets like star ratings wont effect your serp ranking. We can come to a conclusion only when we have compared a bigger set of data for over a month. Changes that occur within 3-4 days are fluctuations and there could be several reasons which are causing them

      This time I am sure it is not the SEO factor because all our blogs are optimized on daily basis. Google has not forgiven anyone this time. Those who are seeing a rise in there traffic are lucky but I would agree this time that they are better optimized, that's why they are ranking high.

      The reason this time is a system algo failure and nothing else. A lot of Indexed data has been configured either willingly or it vanished overnight due to a technical failure.

      Delete
  9. Really its a shocking news friends my blog was also at the top of the searching list and the traffic was also so impressive but the last two days the traffic has been suddenly decreased to 120 .. So friends if any of you know any solution for this problem plzz feel free to reply me !! The link of my Blog is www.spectacularplaces.org

    Regards ^^

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hope you all have also noticed this if we hit for google.com. After redirecting to google.com.pk the URL appears as something like www.google.com.pk/?gws_rd=cr&ei=UOgoUuP8BYeI5ATLtoGoBw
    This has been appearing since middle of the August. Are wrong things are happening with Google Pakistan only?? Because India's traffic is going well as normal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes I faced the same problem but once I reinstalled Firefox and removed the add-ons things looked normal.

      Delete
  11. Luckily my blog rank improved 10 lac :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hello, a few months ago I also dropped traffic by 70% and then I get confused. Some days I contemplate mistakes than I did.

    After that I thought to make a niche that is more frequently visited by unique visitors. And after that I was back to normal visitors.

    Yihaaaa

    ReplyDelete
  13. All I know is, something huge happen in Google search results..

    ReplyDelete
  14. Assalam O Alkium Mohammad,
    Thanks for sharing this matter here because all bloggers worried about this. I am waiting for more tips on this topic from MBT. One thing I just want to ask that In Webmaster tool, should we set preferred domain? If yes, then on what URL www.example.com or without www. I would really thankful to you if you answer it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. W.salam Saleem!

      Dear just give me another day and you will get all tips on what to do.
      Never set a preferred domain just choose the option: Don't set a preferred domain

      Google will detect your settings from your web host directly

      Delete
  15. Hello Mustafa Bro,
    I'm also facing approx 70%-80% traffic down.
    I'm eagerly waiting for your next post. Please post it soon :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ankit I do sympathize on that. I will try my best to post it the sooner possible. :)

      Delete
  16. Waiting for next about this issue.

    www.keyguru1.com

    ReplyDelete
  17. My traffic also dropped about 80% within last few days waiting your next post please post it soon.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I lost 40% of my traffic. Working hard to recover it.

    Thanks for this great case study..

    ReplyDelete
  19. My traffics dropped near about 68%. Google don't want popularity of sites and bloggers.

    :(

    ReplyDelete
  20. My traffic has been hit too. Though not as badly as 80%. wondering what could have gone wrong-Losing all motivation to carry on blogging. :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't loose hope because I said there is nothing wrong on your side this time. Google has surely faced a technical loss which they are soon going to sort out. I have some precautionary measures which I will post shortly.

      Delete
  21. I am waiting for ur next post

    ReplyDelete
  22. I have also lost around 50% visitors. Suggest something...

    ReplyDelete
  23. Wow ! I thought i am the only one experiencing such traffic drop not knowing that its a general issue..

    My daily pageviews is 2000+ and it immediately dropped to 400+, that's so bad and when i checked my traffic source i noticed not a single one came from www.google.com or www.google.com.ng making me believe that the problem is from Google not my blog... I've even lost the passion when i saw this bad drop.

    Kindly post your next update to help us get over this and last thing to mention, I need a SEO Expert for my blog - www.stevenbergy.com.ng ... Any help about that ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ayoola that is the exact same thing almost everyone is facing. We are surely going to release the tips in coming days.

      About SEO services please contact us through http://services.mybloggertricks.com/

      Delete
  24. Hello SEO Experts,

    I have a website which is losing traffic day by day. Unique Content, Meta title, tag, Description, keyword density are OK but yet my post is not ranked.
    On the other hand, Some website which are not maintain these rules or instruction, they are on top ranking. Just i am surprised with Google behavior.
    I can't understand whats the reason? Why Google doing this.
    I think its OK when i post a article with a High Competition keyword but when when i post a local article with a low Competition keyword, why its happen?

    My site traffic was 6500 on 20 aug and then it suddenly dropped to 900. Don't know what happened

    Please help me.
    Just waiting for your answer.
    Thanks all in advance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Raj as I am continuously emphasizing on one fact that there is absolutely no flaw on user side this time. YOur site deserves the same traffic and it will surely get back to where it was. Give Google another two weeks and keep observing your analytics till then. Working on your 404 errors also till that time and don't change anything unless there comes an official statement from Matt Cutts on what actually is the problem

      Delete
  25. I believe that Google is working out to fix this issue Brothers

    ReplyDelete
  26. great news is for me my blog traffic is growing day by day...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey plz syggest me some tips to increase traffic o my blog my blog link is here www.galaxycomputerworld.blogspot.com

      Delete
  27. I thought that it affected my blog only! I saw a huge drop in my search traffic for the past 2-3 weeks.I am a bit relaxed now with this post.Thanks for the useful post!

    ReplyDelete
  28. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  29. our website traffic also go down by 80 % in three months starting april 25,2013

    ReplyDelete
  30. Agrees 40% loss in my blog related to blogger tips but one of my entertainment blog got 80% fall in traffic. Do not now but what the hell happened. traffic from 9000 has dropped to 500-600 and still continues.

    ReplyDelete
  31. same problem with my WP blog.I though I am the only one having this massive traffic drop.....600-700 visitors to 60-70 visitors per day.
    Waiting for your next article how to recover it.

    ReplyDelete
  32. aslamualaikum
    bro i have created a blog but don't know why google is not interested to index my blog :(
    this is my blog link
    www.wehelpblogger.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  33. Even I was shocked, that my Website dropped 70 - 80% Traffic from Google Search and I was searching for it that why did it happen to me, but now it has been cleared that this is a fault from Google. As you mentioned in a pic above, "Products not covered by Google" does it mean that Blogger will no longer part of Google and a third party is now operating it?

    ReplyDelete
  34. My site is affected to ...i suddenly realise that a massive traffic drop has occured ..my no. Of page views decreased by 500

    ReplyDelete
  35. My site get 400%, traffic up. I don't know why google make SEO optimized penalized, but i think google will have big update this month

    ReplyDelete
  36. Hello Mustafa Bro,
    I am Facing 60% Traffic Loss.And Some Of My Post Drop From Search Result Also.Please Help Me.

    ReplyDelete
  37. my traffic is also dropped 80% and the fucking matter is that, the blogs that copied my entire post using source code are being shown in google result page on the top. So Mustafa is right that there is failure in google search engine and nothing else. thank God! my blog is not so big.

    ReplyDelete
  38. My website indexing drop down..how to recover..my blog is www.hdwalle.com till now you didn't respond to my comments..

    ReplyDelete
  39. Salam Mohamed
    Thank you very much for all this informations.
    Is this update will be like the rest of the previous updates? Or will Google reneging him?

    At the expense of Matt Cuts on Twitter does not seem that there is a problem at all when the google.

    ReplyDelete
  40. I saw a huge drop on my site in June/July. Been struggling to get my numbers back up.
    http://www.lifecherries.com

    ReplyDelete
  41. Helo sir this is saad and iam probably victum of this...imy site traffic dropped to almost 80% but it was not on 16 or 17 august rather it was on 4th september!! Please help my site androidspakistan.com second iam getting extra alphabets on html link like this
    "http://www.androidspakistan.com/search/label/news#.Uit_NLVHKrE" can u please help me out what wrng?

    ReplyDelete
  42. I too was the victim of Google Cowboy's bullets. My website got dumped by Google on August 13th and I lost 50 % of my web traffic. Thankfully, many of my posts are shared on some forums so I was still getting upto 50% of traffic combining some search engine traffic. Many of my posts simply disappeared from google search index. I was really worried. So, I moved towards Google webmaster tools and fixed each and every error which might be the cause of trouble. Also updated few of my posts. And finally on 4th of this month, my website returned to the track. But still a few posts which used to get good traffic are ranking low.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Two of my blogs affects badly and believe me i was thinking to quit blogging :(. Now, after reading this case study i am able to understand that what was happened exactly. Thanks for sharing such nice information.

    But, now the questions is, how can we recover the lost traffic because traffic of my site is decreasing regularly and i don't know why this is happening. Please, if you have any suggestion please inform me.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. as for as my knowledge is concerned the traffics have been effected world wide,mine is also decreased dont loss your hope keep working soon you will get your traffics back... inshallah

      Delete
  44. Mohammed Bro,
    I owned a website www.capitaljobs.in . From August 6, 2013 my website traffic has decreased by 50%. Now you are telling that it is August 16 , but my website was effected on August 6. When i have checked my report in www.fruition.com a Google Penalty checker tool, i found that my website Google has -100% negative impact on my website. The drop was due to Algorithm updates on Aug 6. So i want to know, how i can overcome this penalty. plz reply me...

    ReplyDelete
  45. Dear Mohammad
    I am daily subscriber of your wonderful blog, i like a thing in your blog that you put adsense 468*60 in between the post. How you can do this please suggest me. I would also use this tool on my blog.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Problem still with my blog on dated 07/09/2013 to 09/09/2013

    ReplyDelete
  47. Dear Mohammad

    This is the height of waiting. I was post many times my query, but i got answer for just 1 or 2 queries. So this is the height of your subscribers and viewers

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear There are two things you must understand:

      1.Firstly we never answer off-topic questions. You kindly read the Comment policy before commenting

      2. Secondly no one pays us for answering their comments. We have over 70K readers and to serve them we need to reach each and every reader. We can't serve one reader every day because if we do so, it would take us a month to reach the remaining comments. So please have some patience and ask topic-related questions only.

      Delete
    2. Dear Mohammad Brother

      If you can search your subscribers comment, then you realize i was post always comment on the topic of the post. But i did not get answer. I know your site and your topics are too good than any other site. Lots of sites copied you. But I think, when a subscriber comment same thing again and again, so this is the matter to answer on top priority. I hope you could understand what i want to say. Sumit Kumar

      Delete
  48. I have also experienced such a big trafffic loss.Hope Google will try to understand the bloggers feelings as well.
    This is my site http://www.trickygamespot.net

    ReplyDelete
  49. also my organic traffic have been decreased and some keyword that i get disappeared

    ReplyDelete
  50. Hello dear mustafa brother .
    A great post as i was also facing the same problem with my 3 month old domain.. i receiving a lot of traffic with positive trend and than suddenly my traffic goes down to 200-600.
    i was seriously shocked.. but after searching and finally reading your post now i have built my energy once again to start posting in that blog. will be waiting for the next update

    ReplyDelete
  51. Great to see ur post..thanks very interesting blog

    ReplyDelete
  52. Yeah same happened to me... there is sudden drop of massive 2k visitors in my traffic rank... don't know what to do??

    ReplyDelete
  53. Sir plzzzzzz post you next post about Recovering from this Drop Traffic because we are facing this problem plz fast post

    ReplyDelete
  54. Hello, my blog is also hosted on blogger. I have also lost my whole google search traffic from last month end. My daily pageviews are decreased from 3000+ to 400+.For those keywords my blog was ranking on first page are now totally wiped out. I am really worried about this, please share some effective ways to recover from this.

    ReplyDelete
  55. hi. My website organic traffic had imcreased in mid august to good number but from sept 3rd it reduced to 80 -90 % and is not recovering since that time. but is steady.

    What's google upto?

    ReplyDelete
  56. Google Services are still facing lots of issue , i am now deciding to migrate to WordPress from blogger .

    www.H4ck3rCracks.com

    ReplyDelete
  57. Traffic decreased day by day, don't know wats wrong. www.cstricks.com

    ReplyDelete
  58. Google is becoming more and more aggressive these days. I really hate google but there is no other way to get targeted traffic without them.

    ReplyDelete
  59. I had 700 visitors every day for my blog they are 40 now <yupeeeeeeeeeeee

    ReplyDelete