Google traffic throttling

[googlemonster]

Does anyone think this exists? No matter how many articles i publish or links I build, the traffic is flat, this is aligned with the fact that while some queries are introduced e.g. x amount of traffic from x amount of keywords, has increased. Also some queries are losing traffic while others are increasing.

I have noticed this over several sites I have build over the past few years, so has led me to believe that google uses some form of throttling: e.g. you can't go above a certain amount of traffic until something else changes e.g age? or is it simply that it is trying not to send an increased amount of traffic over period x?

 

[googlemonster]

Note this google patent:

Search engine 125 may take measures to prevent spam attempts by, for example, employing hysteresis to allow a rank to grow at a certain rate. In another implementation, the rank for a given document may be allowed a certain maximum threshold of growth over a predefined window of time.

 

[googlemonster]

Seems to be the case imo, as keywords go up some go down. I've been trying to break out of this stupid 'wave' that seems to be popular with Google's algorithms. More content is being added, and I have stopped building links, so will see where this goes, but I think they have some sort of throttling, which only permits so much traffic to a domain over time x.

 

[SuperLinks]

This seems like normal "waves" of traffic based upon weekdays and weekends. Most analytics graphs will look the same.

Now, I know that wasn't your question, but something that I wanted to point out.

Since you are building more content, what are your linkbuilding efforts? Just because you are feeding the beast content doesn't mean that it'll return you with rankings. Remember the point of backlinks is to artificially inflate your "popularity", are you backlinking these specific articles to help make it appear that there's some buzz going on?

 

[googlemonster]

Yeah was using Dripable to some articles, although it doesn't seem to be doing much. Do you believe the above patent is in affect? There is a thread on webmasterworld about this.

 

[deesee]

that patent doesn't refer to traffic throttling at all, its referring to controlling how a page rises in the serps over time

 

[googlemonster]

that patent doesn't refer to traffic throttling at all, its referring to controlling how a page rises in the serps over time

well that's throttling in my book? domain or page xyz can only rise by x amount over time y...

 

[flibbertigibbet]

Does anyone think this exists? No matter how many articles i publish or links I build, the traffic is flat, this is aligned with the fact that while some queries are introduced e.g. x amount of traffic from x amount of keywords, has increased. Also some queries are losing traffic while others are increasing.

I have noticed this over several sites I have build over the past few years, so has led me to believe that google uses some form of throttling: e.g. you can't go above a certain amount of traffic until something else changes e.g age? or is it simply that it is trying not to send an increased amount of traffic over period x?

I've been seeing this a LOT with my sites. They're spread across 3 different IPs and it does this wave thing. The weird part is that every 3-7 days I get a huge surge of traffic across all sites and then the rest it's fairly low. My rankings have not changed and do not change throughout these surges and declines. They stay the same, and it's not a weekend thing either. I've already established that weekends are better for my niches, but the surges occur throughout the WEEK, and there is no particular pattern as to what day the surge happens, nor is there a pattern as to what country these visitors are coming from. One week it may be the UK, the next it's France. A bit frustrating if you ask me, because I'm ranked #1 for this term in almost every country. Without personalized results, cookies, or G +1 results. I've used proxies to verify rankings in other countries as well. SOMETHING is going on with the traffic on Google's end. It's annoying. It's not my hosting either, because I've checked that too. I've seen the same thing happen with Adwords campaigns when I was running them, but of course those jump up and down from time to time. My sites don't. UGH. I'm gonna be watching the Adwords results on the SERPS over the next week or so and see if some of the advertiser activity changes. Could be that. Just not sure. Maybe more relevant advertisers on certain days than others?

 

[goinviral]

I have an ancient domain (1999)! that has been number 1 for a high traffic keyword since about 2003 and one thing I can tell you is the traffic is not the same from day to day. The web is a fluid thing. The google index is changing daily, if you are lucky you might not see an affect on your main keyword but longer tail keywords are constantly changing positions. We are all competing!! We are all building backlinks adding content changing the look of sites etc etc etc, these things change what google see's on a day today basis. So yes the so called "traffic throttling affect" is probably a part of the algorythm, and as you said by limiting how quickly an article will travel up the SERP's. But what I suspect you are really seeing is good ole capitalism and competition at work! You are not the only one targetting your niche no matter how obscure and you are not the only one adding content and backlinks on a day today basis.

 

[phpbuilt]

I have my own theory of what Google is does. They say "this site, based on its age, backlink portfolio and other factors, deserves this volume of traffic" ...

Lets say you qualify for 400 unique visitors a day. It then goes through your site and allows you to rank for a combination of keywords which it believes will allow you to receive 400 unique visitors a day (giving preference of course to the best optimized or best backlinks).

The reason I think this is I can have a website which has around 400 visitors a day, and going up on a steady bar ... traffic seems to double every 4 months.

Now I can pick like 4 URLs which rank well and spam them ... then they start doing the Google dance. Those 4 URLs were the most traffic pages, then they skip to the teens or 20s ... yet somehow my website still gets the exact same amount of hits you would expect from Google (the 400 a day) and if those 4 urls consisted of 100 and drops down to 20 ... then my other pages pick up the slack and give me the additional 80.

Its just really weird how predictable traffic from Google is, and sometimes you get a bonus and the bonus ends up being on a new tier of flatline or slant ... its like Google said "ok you had 300 but now you're allowed 350" and all your keywords jumble around to make it so.

This also turns your over-optimized pages into "waiting on deck". Yeah -- you certainly qualify for a high position on that keyword, but if it were given to you then you'd break your throttled traffic model so for now, that page is going to be suppressed. But later on when you qualify for that extra 50 visitors a day, that page suddenly ranks like it should.

Just my observations anyways.

 

[flibbertigibbet]

Interesting findings folks....I've been monitoring my traffic and times that they've signed up for certain offers (via a CPA network), and have also taken screenshots of the Adwords ads that were running throughout the day. I've done this in multiple countries and found out that the reason that I'm getting drops and surges in traffic is due to the amount of ads that were on the SERP page. Not their positions, but just strictly the AMOUNT of ads. I've never really had to deal with this before because a lot of my past sites were image based. There's a pretty dramatic difference between traffic that my site gets when a lot of ads are running versus when fewer ads are running:

When LOTS of ads are running, I'll get 1-2 CPA signups an hour.
When FEW ads are running, I'll get 10-23 signups an hour.

That's a HUGE difference...just because of adwords ads showing up on the serp page. Just thought I'd share this finding with folks who don't know about how adwords ads impact your organic traffic. It may be obvious to experienced PPC folks or Guru IMers, but not everyone runs into stuff like this, so it's good to get explanations and/or a heads up so that you're not stuck or clueless when it happens to you.

 

[VIC SEO]

If you take a look at my Analytics I would have said that it looks exactly like it, what I was going to ask before I clicked on this was to how to increase your traffic for the whole week. Now having looked atyour analytics I realize that this kind of thing is routine. Now you must know that traffic increases or decreases and this kind of thing is normal, sometime one keyword brings in the traffic and sometimes the other one brings in the traffic.

 

[DamageX]

When LOTS of ads are running, I'll get 1-2 CPA signups an hour.
When FEW ads are running, I'll get 10-23 signups an hour.

That doesn't necessarily have to do with traffic. It has to do with the fact that you cause confusion by serving more ads, which causes the visitor to go "Fuck it, I can't decide which one to click, I think I'll just close the page!"

 

[videovic]

What you guys are talking about doesn't seem like throttling, compared to what we have been going through. Perhaps you all have a better name for it. For the last year or so our traffic has been basically been switched on and off repeatedly, with no word from google and no apparent reason. I'm talking about a traffic level of 300 a day for a month then jumping down to 70 a day for 2 - 3 months, then jump back to 300 a day for 3 weeks and back down, again and again over and over. Does anyone have any theory about what can cause this type of scenario? the site is asapkaraoke . Thanks all.