Has Bourbon finally got me?

[Petrocelli]

Hi everybody,

this is my first post to this forum.

All recent days (weeks) I was wondering why the whole world is talking about G's recent update, because my site's ranking didn't change at all.

Until this morning. :-|

Traffic has dropped by 2/3, and here is why: It seems that still all pages are being indexed, but search results previously on page #1 or #2 now show up on page #5 and below.

Even worse, a search for "mysitename.com" (where "mysitename" is a unique, artificial word) - for which I was #1 for years (PR 6, if this still matters) - brings up a sub page of mine as result #40, and my main page "mysitename.com" BELOW of it (indented).

Many clean sites (linking to me with "mysitename.com" as an anchor) and plenty of scrapers are suddenly ranking better than the site they are pointing to - this is ridiculous. And needless to say that on Y! and MSN this search is still #1 ...

Why is this nightmare suddenly happening to my site?

Any advice or insight would be very much appreciated.

Greetings from Germany

Peter

[AussieWebmaster]

I agree and the recent changes in the algorythm seem to warrant convern.

[summerherekids]

unfortunate, but i'm sure that the changes google is making to their serps is all for the best. google is a great search engine and many people use it because it consistently provides the most relevant results. i'm sure your site will end up right where it belongs.

[AussieWebmaster]

Pass the bottle of bourbon... this new algo is driving me batty!!!

[crazylogic]

It is all subject to change, one day you are on top of the world the next day you are greatful for those people who remember your name.

My only long term suggestions are to not depend on any single source of traffic for your website. Develope other sources of traffic to the point that if you lose your biggest traffic source you will still be able to remain.

When you least expect it the Search Engine Gods will bless your site with more traffic than the host can handle. It may be at any time ... look at the pages that are still doing well for hints to get more SE traffic.

Currently I'm with you, hoping google with reject this update and revert back.

That about sums up all the wisdom I can give you on living after the bourbon gets you.