mtj85
Regular Member
- May 7, 2014
- 464
- 170
Hi.
I have a site which has geo-targeting set to USA. This was done in error. 14 days after this change the international traffic to the site (from Spain, Brazil, Germany, Canada etc) dropped by 95-99% which I believe is the obvious consequence of changed geo targeting setting in GWT. The domain has .COM TLD. Traffic from USA stayed approximately the same, and traffic from BING, YAHOO also stayed about the same.
I changed the site's geo targetting back to "unlisted" but it has been more than 4 months now and no recovery of international traffic. The site also took a big hit in adsense earnings (about 80% down).
I read online that international traffic can take very long to recover after playing with geo-settings tool. Which seems quite true.
My question is - if i 301 this whole domain to another domain with .COM tld and no geo-targetting set in GWT will the redirect affect the new domain? Will the geo setting be transferred along with backlinks? Meaning will I get "rid" of the geo-targetting setting with new domain?
I understand that it will take time to rank with new domain name, but at least I will be able to see if the geo targetting switch really killed my international traffic.
Because I would like to recover the lost 10k international traffic to the site back (which was converting quite well).
The site was most probably not hit by some algo penalty as this is a unique site with high authority links (no black hat whatsoever) from WSJ and other reputable sites. The backlink portfolio is really impressive, so to say. No manual / artificial backlinking done, only natural ones. About 500 unique domains. Content is also unique and actually helpful to the users (users interact with the site all the time).
The only other thing that could happen to this site is the change in google algo which took down my other-than-USA traffic. But I really doubt as the switch in geo-targetting and lost of traffic is really correlated (14 days in between).
What are you opinions on this? Thank you!
I have a site which has geo-targeting set to USA. This was done in error. 14 days after this change the international traffic to the site (from Spain, Brazil, Germany, Canada etc) dropped by 95-99% which I believe is the obvious consequence of changed geo targeting setting in GWT. The domain has .COM TLD. Traffic from USA stayed approximately the same, and traffic from BING, YAHOO also stayed about the same.
I changed the site's geo targetting back to "unlisted" but it has been more than 4 months now and no recovery of international traffic. The site also took a big hit in adsense earnings (about 80% down).
I read online that international traffic can take very long to recover after playing with geo-settings tool. Which seems quite true.
My question is - if i 301 this whole domain to another domain with .COM tld and no geo-targetting set in GWT will the redirect affect the new domain? Will the geo setting be transferred along with backlinks? Meaning will I get "rid" of the geo-targetting setting with new domain?
I understand that it will take time to rank with new domain name, but at least I will be able to see if the geo targetting switch really killed my international traffic.
Because I would like to recover the lost 10k international traffic to the site back (which was converting quite well).
The site was most probably not hit by some algo penalty as this is a unique site with high authority links (no black hat whatsoever) from WSJ and other reputable sites. The backlink portfolio is really impressive, so to say. No manual / artificial backlinking done, only natural ones. About 500 unique domains. Content is also unique and actually helpful to the users (users interact with the site all the time).
The only other thing that could happen to this site is the change in google algo which took down my other-than-USA traffic. But I really doubt as the switch in geo-targetting and lost of traffic is really correlated (14 days in between).
What are you opinions on this? Thank you!