{"id":24156,"date":"2009-06-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/traffic-drops-and-site-architecture-issues\/"},"modified":"2009-06-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-28T00:00:00","slug":"traffic-drops-and-site-architecture-issues","status":"publish","type":"ar_kb","link":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/traffic-drops-and-site-architecture-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Traffic drops and site architecture issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"gargardate\">Sunday, June 28, 2009<\/p>\n<p>\n  We hear lots of questions about site architecture issues and traffic drops, so it was a pleasure<br \/>\n  to talk about it in greater detail at<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/searchmarketingexpo.com\/london\/2009\/full_agenda2\" class=\"external-link\">SMX London<\/a><br \/>\n  and I&#8217;d like to highlight some key concepts from my presentation here. First off, let&#8217;s gain a<br \/>\n  better understanding of drops in traffic, and then we&#8217;ll take a look at site design and<br \/>\n  architecture issues.\n<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"understanding-drops-in-traffic\" tabindex=\"-1\">Understanding drops in traffic<\/h2>\n<p>\n  As you know, fluctuations in search results happen all the time;<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/how-search-works\/\">the web is constantly evolving and so is our index<\/a>.<br \/>\n  Improvements in our ability to understand our users&#8217; interests and queries also often lead to<br \/>\n  differences in how our algorithms select and rank pages. We realize, however, that such changes<br \/>\n  might be confusing and sometimes foster misconceptions, so we&#8217;d like to address a couple of these<br \/>\n  myths head-on.\n<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"myth-number-1:-duplicate-content-causes-drops-in-traffic\" tabindex=\"-1\">Myth number 1: Duplicate content causes drops in traffic!<\/h2>\n<p>\n  Webmasters often wonder if the duplicates on their site can have a negative effect on their site&#8217;s<br \/>\n  traffic. As<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/specify-canonical\/\">mentioned in our guidelines<\/a>,<br \/>\n  unless this duplication is intended to manipulate Google and\/or users, the duplication is not a<br \/>\n  violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. The second part of my presentation illustrates in greater<br \/>\n  detail how to deal with duplicate content<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/specify-canonical\/\">using canonicalization<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"myth-number-2:-affiliate-programs-cause-drops-in-traffic\" tabindex=\"-1\">Myth number 2: Affiliate programs cause drops in traffic!<\/h2>\n<p>\n  Original and compelling content is crucial for a good user experience. If your website<br \/>\n  participates in<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/spam-policies\/#thin-affiliate-pages\">affiliate programs<\/a>,<br \/>\n  it&#8217;s essential to consider whether the same content is available in many other places on the web.<br \/>\n  Affiliate sites with little or no original and compelling content are not likely to rank well in<br \/>\n  Google search results, but including affiliate links within the context of original and compelling<br \/>\n  content isn&#8217;t in itself the sort of thing that leads to traffic drops.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Having reviewed a few of the most common concerns, I&#8217;d like to highlight two important sections<br \/>\n  of the presentation. The first illustrates how malicious attacks&mdash;such as an injection of<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/spam-policies\/\">hidden text and links<\/a><br \/>\n  &mdash;might cause your site to be removed from Google&#8217;s search results. On a happier note, it<br \/>\n  also covers how you can use the Google cache and Webmaster Tools to identify this issue. On a<br \/>\n  related note, if we&#8217;ve found a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines such as the use of hidden<br \/>\n  text or the presence of<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/message-center-warnings-for-hackable-sites\/\">malware on your site<\/a>,<br \/>\n  you will typically find a note regarding this in your Webmaster Tools Message center.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  You may also find your site&#8217;s traffic decreased if your users are being redirected to another<br \/>\n  site&#8230;for example, due to a hacker-applied server- or page-level redirection triggered by<br \/>\n  referrals from search engines.  A similar scenario&mdash;but with different results&mdash;is the<br \/>\n  case in which a hacker has instituted a redirection for crawlers only. While this will cause no<br \/>\n  immediate drop in traffic since users and their visits are not affected, it might lead to a<br \/>\n  decrease in pages indexed over time.\n<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"site-design-and-architecture-issues\" tabindex=\"-1\">Site design and architecture issues<\/h2>\n<p>\n  Now that we&#8217;ve seen how malicious changes might affect your site and its traffic, let&#8217;s examine<br \/>\n  some design and architecture issues. Specifically, you want to ensure that your site is able to<br \/>\n  be both effectively crawled and indexed, which is the prerequisite to being shown in our search<br \/>\n  results. What should you consider?\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n    First off, check that your robots.txt file has the correct status code and is not<br \/>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/webmasters\/bin\/answer.py?answer=35147\" class=\"external-link\">returning an error<\/a>.\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    Keep in mind some best practices when<br \/>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/best-practices-when-moving-your-site\/\">moving to a new site<\/a><br \/>\n    and the new<br \/>\n    &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/webmasters\/bin\/answer.py?answer=83106\" class=\"external-link\">Change of address<\/a>&#8221;<br \/>\n    feature<br \/>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new\/\">recently added<\/a><br \/>\n    to Webmaster Tools.\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    Review the settings of the robots.txt file to make sure no pages&mdash;particularly those<br \/>\n    rewritten and\/or dynamic&mdash;are blocked inappropriately.\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    Finally, make good use of<br \/>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/specify-canonical\/\">the <code>rel=\"canonical\"<\/code> attribute<\/a><br \/>\n    to reduce the indexing of duplicate content on your domain. The example in the presentation<br \/>\n    shows how using this attribute helps Google understand that a duplicate can be clustered with<br \/>\n    the canonical and that the original, or canonical, page should be indexed.\n  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n  In conclusion, remember that fluctuations in search results are normal but there are steps that<br \/>\n  you can take to avoid malicious attacks or design and architecture issues that might cause your<br \/>\n  site to disappear or fluctuate unpredictably in search results. Start by learning more about<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/preventing-virtual-blight-my-presentation-from-web-2-0-summit\/\">attacks by hackers and spammers<\/a>,<br \/>\n  make sure everything is running properly at crawling and indexing level by double-checking the<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/webmasters\/bin\/answer.py?answer=80407\" class=\"external-link\">HTML suggestions in Webmaster Tools<\/a>,<br \/>\n  and finally,<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/webmasters\/tools\/robots-testing-tool\" class=\"external-link\">test your robots.txt<\/a><br \/>\n  file in case you are accidentally blocking Googlebot. And don&#8217;t forget about those<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/webmasters\/bin\/answer.py?answer=35147\" class=\"external-link\">&#8220;robots.txt unreachable&#8221; errors<\/a>!\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"byline-author\">Written by Luisella Mazza, Search Quality Senior Analyst<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, June 28, 2009 We hear lots of questions about site architecture issues and traffic drops, so it was a pleasure to talk about it in greater detail at SMX London and I&#8217;d like to highlight some key concepts from my presentation here. First off, let&#8217;s gain a better understanding of drops in traffic, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":85577,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"ar_kb_kategori":[665],"ar_kb_etiket":[],"class_list":["post-24156","ar_kb","type-ar_kb","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ar_kb_kategori-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/24156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ar_kb"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/24156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ar_kb_kategori","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb_kategori?post=24156"},{"taxonomy":"ar_kb_etiket","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb_etiket?post=24156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}