Recently I posted that I looked at SBI sites’ performance in several segments.
http://www.suckersbuyit.com/forums/topic/new-sbi-domains/
First, I checked all the sites linked in several threads at http://www.sbi2-4u.com/ for sites that had Google traffic. I can’t count how many I checked but I …
…(today I’ve checked over 30 sites in SEMRUSH alone), including my own. In the end it was over 50 sites in total.
Then I checked the 30+ sites in my coffee niche that have been around for several years.
With two different groups of sites, I cannot find one site out of 80+ that has now got more Google traffic than six months ago, using SEMRUSH. And that is after steep falls from 2010/11. In fact, many sites now seem to have less traffic than in 2009/10, too.
While I don’t have comprehensive access to stats on the 50 other sites, I’ve been monitoring my niche of competing SBI sites for over 12 months now. I don’t even claim that my stats are comprehensive at all. But what I see is not encouraging.
In my niche:
In terms of page count, every single site now is static. Out of the original 32 sites, nine have closed down altogether. And four others have moved to other hosting.
There is one new site that is growing but SEM’s stats only goto 2010. So I reckon that site isn’t new at all. I have only been monitoring for a short while.
Out of all the 33 sites, only one site has shrunk the number of pages by over 100 pages. He has also improved the site, added social, worked on the presentation, etc. etc. But there is no recovery according to SEMRUSH in Google traffic.
I have not compared these stats to a group outside SBI, but the one or two coffee sites I do frequent have widely varying performance. One is like the SBI sites, the other is doing well in the Google Game.
Overall, while I don’t have access to the 30K sites that KE has, I can sense something is not right in my niche. The coffee sites used to be a vibrant niche for SBI and there was/is plenty of demand still, but now only one site out of 32 is actively pursuing this market within SBI.
Of course, in the Google Game, there are winners & losers… but with the new rules uncertain, Google not revealing all by any means, and the possibility that SBI sites are viewed as Spam/Content farms… it’s a difficult period for everyone in SBI.
As someone suggested How I divorced Google by unindoctrinating myself! may be the only viable solution for most sites/webmasters whether or not they use SBI. I think that may be the reason the other non-sbi site is doing well.
Ken’s report is approaching, but … the other two haven’t staunched the flood according to my niche’s situation.
My conclusions are tentative, prone to bias, and not-statistically tested… Draw your own conclusions.
Kenneth