[whoismua]

Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads.

Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5 search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by underhanded methods each quarter.

[nikatwork]

I sifted through a lot of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content.

I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic will come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)

[hueving]

> they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered by manual intervention.

>I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos

There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.

[riffraff]

a link loop is a red flag? I guess I am misunderstanding, as that would mean I can't have a "artticles like this <link> <link>" block in my blog, which seems very weird.

[whoismua]

You miss the point completely: If Google ads an extra ad you might lose 20% of your traffic even if your rank stays the same. Or if they ad youtube videos on the display, or books, or local or whatever....

So call it manual, algorithmic, display change or whatever, you're f-ed and call moves more of web traffic to its own properties.