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The "people" have been stolen. Thats just a theory I have running right now. I have noticed a change in the bots/spiders that visit here and the majority (98%) are from a chinese website that is google's competitor in China. I am thinking they have stolen the spaces afforded to legitimate seach engine spiders like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Just to name a few. So if they can't get in here they in effect dont know what exists. To me it drives traffic away and is a boon to the Chinese for the information that is provided by this site. They appear to be mining it very heavily.

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Like here:https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/active...ll-789903.html

Has anything been asked/mentioned to Admin? What's the deal? It is not just slow - it is DEAD.

I stay logged in and although it is a little slower, I manage to find as much pleasure in it as I used to. Smoothy seems to do pretty good too.

After eight years here, not ready to throw in the towel !

The BOT thing really is important... if the Google, Bing and Yahoo Bots don't get here... the site will make a huge drop on search engine results. I don't think the chinese bots are really crowding them out... because that would effectively be a DNS type attack and people wouldn't be able to get in at all, which I haven't seen happen. I've always gotten in without problem. Except for the few times there were database errors that crashed the site the last few months.

The Google crawlers are indexing the site just fine, I just did a test.

Lot of websites see a seasonal dropoff at certain points of the year also... spring and summer tend to be low spots as people are doing other things away from the computer. Even discounting that there are ebbs and tides even from year to year. At least on the specialty sites, those are more hobbiest oriented... I don't know if the commercial online stores see the same sorts of seasonal variations (beyond Christmas).

You guys sound lonely, so visit some of the other forums. Even the plumbers are answering pregnancy questions.

I avoid most of those... I lose faith in the future of humanity reading some of the stupidity on a lot of those threads.

Procreation like driving a car should require passing a test to show basic knowledge before you are allowed behind the wheel. But then, who would live in trailer parks, and work at Walmart?

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Lot of websites see a seasonal dropoff at certain points of the year also... spring and summer tend to be low spots as people are doing other things away from the computer.

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The Alexa link I posted shows a steady decline in traffic/ranking over the years.

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Originally Posted by NeedKarma

The Alexa link I posted shows a steady decline in traffic/ranking over the years.

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That pretty much discounts specific events then. Like the upgrades and skin issues from being at fault.

It all took a drastic drop-off it seems when the new updates were done.

I didn't think that much time had passed since that was done... but maybe it has. If that peak was right before the upgrades. When was that exactly... I don't remember.

I don't recall when it all happened. All I do remember about it was that when it happened and we were having the problems, I kept wondering when the traffic was going to get back to normal and it just seems that it hasn't ever gone back to how it was before the updates.

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Originally Posted by NeedKarma

The Google crawlers are indexing the site just fine, I just did a test.

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It looks like the spider population is back to normal. The Baidu Spiders have a secondary spot now and not the primary one they had been at. They were occupying 98% of allocated bot space squeezing out the rest. Now lets see if there is a difference in search engine results.

Would the keywords or wording you use in the search engine be a big factor in this site coming up near the top? When I copy paste the OP questions we always are near the top, but not so much when I type just a part of the question.

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Originally Posted by talaniman

Would the keywords or wording you use in the search engine be a big factor in this site coming up near the top? When I copy paste the OP questions we always are near the top, but not so much when I type just a part of the question.

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A lot of it depends on the ranking for the page. How relevent is it to what is being asked. Then google rates it and that is how the position in the search engine is determined.

Google uses a formula for making the ranking and it has to have that information first.

Thanks dad, could you elaborate on the formula a bit and don't forget how dense I am on most things. Please no hard head jokes, I'm sensitive, :D

The actual formula is a secret. They do that to keep sites from tweaking to get to the top of the list without actually being valid to the point. Here are some links that are an easy read to help you understand "How Stuff Works".

The Google Search Engine Formula.

Google Overhauls Search Engine Formula

It used to be that I'd leave for an hour, come back, and not only have updates on every thread I had posted on, but pages of new questions.

Now I can leave for days, come back, have one or two updates on threads I posted on, and 5 or six new questions since the last time I posted.

Sad.