Answers.com has claimed that changes to Google's algorithm have reduced its traffic from the search engine.
The site, which provides information on a range of topics, said it had experienced a 28% drop in traffic from the levels it was experiencing before the change.
This should serve as a warning for any site that relies too much on Google and is vulnerable to any tweaks by the search engine.
Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein said the drop showed the importance of the company's acquisition of Dictionary.com, which it hopes will provide a more reliable source of traffic.
He said:
"On a pro forma basis, we expect at least 70% of our total traffic to come from people navigating directly to our web properties or typing the term 'dictionary' in a search engine."
However, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has asked around, and no-one else seems to be aware of any recent changes to Google's algorithm.
Further reading:
'Google bombs' defused by algorithm change
The Google algorithm, according to Rand Fishkin
Graham Charlton is Editor at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin or Google+.
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10:43PM on 7th August 2007
Over the last few weeks Google has most definitely been tweaking their algorithms.
After nearly a decade of top 10 search engine results for recipes our site has now lost about 95% of it's traffic due to Google's changes, resulting in our company laying off 40+ staff hired to actively improve the quality of our content.
I'm not certain who Danny was asking but our analytics data very clearly shows controlled testing and then deployment of the new algorithm.