Live by Google, Die by Google

Gene, I started my site at the end of September and got it linked to many high PR ranked sites. Because of this, the site got indexed extremely well with Google and linked from Yahoo as well. All was going great up until 4 - 5 days ago. After my indexed pages went from 47000 on Google up to 97900 indexed pages there - my traffic dropped to almost nothing from around 550 -580 uniques a day now it is like 65 - 75 uniques a day and all my sales have dropped to 0. All is working just fine. All the links still point to my site. All is as it was, except - all my traffic is gone, and so are sales. What could be the problem according to you?

           

Well, I wish I had good news for you.  Your situation is very similar to many others I have personally observed.  When you live by Google you sometimes die by Google as well.        

What happens is Google wants to make sure that the sites that rank high have the following criteria satisfied:

a) they have unique content (something that no other sites have).        
b) they change frequently.        
c) they have been doing this for a loooong time.        
d) they have back links from sites that have a) and b) and c) and d).        

Basically this is how Google determines whether a site is popular.  Popular sites are sites that have links from other popular sites.  Google made the process of obtaining high page rank especially difficult by weeding out fly-by-night web sites and sites that do not have any unique content to offer beyond what is offered by other sites that are already popular.  I cannot tell you why you were actually getting traffic for a while.  Unfortunately, it is a known fact that Google changes its algorithm frequently to ensure a)-d) above is maintained by popular sites.

I suggest you make sure your site has additional content such as product reviews that you collect directly from consumers (if you simply re-syndicate reviews from Amazon, you will not get page rank because Google will consider this redundant).  Also, make sure you add to your content frequently.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
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