My website stopped having visitors

[mangacompimenta]

Last week, I had a problem with my website that was giving error 520.

I spoke to Godaddy and they said it was Cloudflare’s fault because of SSL.

I ended up switching my hosting product from Sites Managed WordPress Ultimate 2 sites to Sites Managed WordPress Ultimate - 1 site, my SEO plummeted.

It had an average of 15 to 20 thousand visits per day and increased to 5 thousand.

In addition to my earnings on adsense almost zero.

I’ve looked at everything and I can’t see where the problem is.

My website: www.mangacompimenta.com

Another thing I noticed, godaddy doesn’t recognize my domain that you have. I saw that the TTL 3600 they ask for and on Cloudflare it is on automatic.

Thank you for your attention.

Fernanda

[user2765]

GoDaddy will sometimes try to blame your issue on irrelevant things if the tech support agent your speaking with encounters a configuration which they are unfamiliar with, such as using Cloudflare.

I don’t think the GoDaddy rep is accurate in that SSL is your problem since the site is loading without any SSL errors front-facing.

There is an on-going issue with some sites being blocked to Google bot crawler which will indeed impact your SEO and if continues for an extended period of time then Google will remove your listings from the search engine with only a limited grace period.

It is just my suspicion of the issue, but I may not be correct either; let’s investigate and see whats wrong. Do you have Google Search Console for your website?

[mangacompimenta]

[mangacompimenta]

Hi, yes I have and there, everything is ok.

I’m going to send a screenshot and today I spoke to Godaddy again and they said that they don’t recognize the domain on the system (the site is now live).

I bought my domain with Cloudflare in March and is there a way to put the dns in place of the value IP?

Above, image of the attendant saying that my site had a problem because of cloudflaire’s ssl.

Sending their chat to you.

Thank you for your help.

[mangacompimenta]

[user2765]

The issue is definitely not Cloudflare SSL, if anything having SSL gives you a positive effect in SEO. Theres nothing wrong with the SSL certificate from Cloudflare, not better or worse than any other SSL cert. Don’t believe GoDaddy when they blame your Cloudflare SSL certificate.

@mangacompimenta

yes I have

Thanks for confirming you have Google Search Console setup. Now I want to confirm your statement about previously having 15,000 to 20,000 daily visitors and now only 5,000 daily visitors.

I want you to show me some reports from the Google Search Console and Google Analytics. I’m asking this to see how your measuring it, and also to see if your were maybe reading a HTTP logs report previously which would be inflated due to bots and anything else that hits your server.

Please send me a screenshot of your last 6 months report from your Google Search Console, like this

And send me a screenshot of your last 90 days report from Google Analytics, like this:

You can include the AdSense reports if you want.

[mangacompimenta]

Follow the prints you asked for and sorry, I don’t know your name and I thank you for the attention given.

In February I had a crush on a change that google implemented, but it hadn’t affected my earnings and I’m working on posts to improve SEO.

The biggest problem is from the 5th of May until now, after the error 520 and they told me to change to another product, everything went down.

[mangacompimenta]

I’m not able to attach them all at once, I’m sending the prints separately.

[mangacompimenta]

this is from the search console.

[mangacompimenta]

this difference that worries me the most, I’m talking to the Google ADS community and they say everything is ok when you enter the site.

[user2765]

Mmmm, this is a bit hard to diagnose whats happened. I don’t think it’s a technical thing, but if it is due to some technical matter it’s something discrete.

Yesterday I had a suspicion that Google was being prevented from accessing your site that might explain a drop in traffic from Google Search however I used some of Googles testing tools to test if it was happening but no. Google is not having any problem to access your site.

But I did notice a couple of times that I was being prevented to access your site, this could be attributed to a small drop in visitors to your website but the vast majority of your visitors would not be having such an issue. Your site appears to be working 99% of the time.

Can you please go to your domain in Cloudflare, and navigate to Security Settings. Send me a screenshot of this page:

[mangacompimenta]

Sorry for the delay, I have a sick child at home to help.

Some readers said that some links are going to a page with a number instead of www.mangacompimenta.com.

This is from the old product I was on and that gave error 520.

I don’t know if it’s a DNS issue or me fighting them. Because of these events, I believe I lost ranking on google.

Attached is what you asked for.

[mangacompimenta]

Here’s the attachment they sent me!

[user2765]

Yes I also had this issue. Some of the links on your website are going to this. It’s not an issue with Cloudflare, and not an issue with GoDaddy either. It may have been caused maliciously, by accident, or from a bad plugin.

Can you tell me your contact email so I can talk to you about getting this fixed.

This is from the old product I was on and that gave error 520.

Error code 520 is caused by your website or server having an unknown error. This sounds more like a bad plugin or some malicious infection on your WordPress website based on above issues too.

[mangacompimenta]

Hey, good morning

my email is [email protected]

Thanks

Fernanda

[user2765]

For the reference of anyone else having this problem. The issue ended up being related to the GoDaddy integration into their WordPress hosting. The plan was not a cPanel account but rather GoDaddy’s custom version of WordPress hosting and that has some custom GoDaddy stuff that ties into the WordPress install.

The WordPress hosting had a default hostname ‘18c.899.myftpupload.com’ assigned by GoDaddy and then its attached to their domain mangacompimenta.com but due to some technical error in GoDaddy’s integration that when the plan was upgraded to “Managed WordPress Ultimate 1 Site” that the default hostname changed to “1jj.35e.myftpupload.com” and then all the links weren’t being updated to their domain name anymore. The old hostname link was being exposed in all the links generated by WordPress. When people would click links it would be like “http://18c.899.myftpupload.com/the-page-path” and that would be an error page.

Because users were not able to navigate through the site anymore it was having a huge effect on the number of visitors, and subsequently a negative impact on the sites ranking and SEO.

Hope that makes sense.

What to do if you have this problem in the future?
Show the issue to GoDaddy about what link people are seeing on your website, and navigate into the backend “Settings” tab and then “SFTP login” details to find what your new hostname is.

Don’t let GoDaddy support representatives tell you misleading technical reasons, or blame it on irrelevant things like SSL or Cloudflare. The issue was nothing to do with SSL or Cloudflare.