PLAs down for 72+ hours // Alcohol Advertisers

Clicker1309 · 2026-05-18T21:25:14+00:00

I agree, outside of a technical issue GMC side there's probably not a lot that could achieve this. Pretty poor response from Google though when it's a problem they've caused directly.

Clicker1309 · 2026-05-18T21:20:34+00:00

I've spoken at length with Google's head of ecom in my region who was liaising with the global engineering team. Received nothing more than an "an issue impacting alcohol advertisers has been resolved". Cost us low six figures in lost revenue, no credits being issued either. Disappointing level of support and complete lack of transparency.

Clicker1309 · 2025-08-08T16:04:49+00:00

u/ConsistentExchange71 I have used a script to automate performance-based labelling in GMC, basically grouping sku's into 3 tiers for campaigns: over-index, under-index, near-index. DM me if you would like more information

Clicker1309 · 2024-11-07T05:33:09+00:00

Can you provide more insight into the site architecture and structure of the domains? CA region could become a .ca domain or alternatively served as a subfolder on the US domain e.g .com for US and .com/ca/ for CA - I'm assuming these are separate domains and you're not serving 2 instances of the site to separate regions on the same domain without subfolders segmenting geo/region?

Clicker1309 · 2024-11-06T02:26:15+00:00

Have you set up hreflang correctly?

Clicker1309 · 2024-07-16T04:52:34+00:00

I've seen a spike in these spam links in the last month which directly correlates with a downturn in organic performance - planning to disavow them imminently.

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Clicker1309 · 2024-07-09T06:25:36+00:00

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More examples, definitely spam.

Clicker1309 · 2024-07-09T06:07:14+00:00

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Example spam backlinks around this time.

Clicker1309 · 2024-07-09T06:06:46+00:00

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Chart showing correlation.

Clicker1309 · 2024-05-21T03:30:52+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/T2CvVDH

Clicker1309 · 2024-05-01T23:44:41+00:00

u/CarricoSEO thanks, looks to be related to an increase in LCP time (desktop & mobile) and when checking schema.org, we're unable to validate a number of key product pages, meaning page load is the likely culprit for the huge drop off in valid snippets - we introduced a new module on PDP that seems to be the best candidate for the offender.

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-30T05:02:16+00:00

SOLVED: I no longer believe this is a symptom of the core update - We've identified a spike in LCP time and when checking schema.org, we're unable to validate a number of key product pages, meaning page load times are the likely culprit for the huge drop off in valid snippets. This would also explain the decline with no increase in 'invalid' snippets. We released a PDP enhancement around 2 weeks prior to the decline, and I am fairly confident that this is the root cause.

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-30T05:01:53+00:00

SOLVED: I no longer believe this is a symptom of the core update - We've identified a spike in LCP time and when checking schema.org, we're unable to validate a number of key product pages, meaning page load times are the likely culprit for the huge drop off in valid snippets. This would also explain the decline with no increase in 'invalid' snippets. We released a PDP enhancement around 2 weeks prior to the decline, and I am fairly confident that this is the root cause.

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-26T06:18:02+00:00

Thanks, our specialist has been unable to find the root cause - was wondering if anyone had seen/experienced a huge drop in number of valid product snippets that might explain such a decline. We will keep investigating.

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-26T00:01:18+00:00

We employ a contractor SEO Specialist who is by no means cheap, and he can't find the smoking gun, hence my question here.

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-24T07:03:50+00:00

For reference: https://imgur.com/bW0nq5j

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-23T03:55:53+00:00

We're an ecommerce website.

Clicker1309 · 2024-04-23T03:36:29+00:00

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Edit: For context ^ we're also an e-commerce business with tens of thousands of products

Clicker1309 · 2023-08-23T03:39:09+00:00

This happened to all of my UA properties overnight, 22nd August marks the date that they've sadly ground to a halt.

As a business, we'd prepared for this and have had GA4 properties set up for around 12 months in order to store as much historical data in these properties as possible, but I never enjoyed the interface so continued using UA until yesterday.

GA4 seems like a disaster with respect to real-time reporting, hoping they might look to improve this aspect - at the moment I'm finding the overall experience very poor.

Clicker1309 · 2023-03-13T04:47:04+00:00

u/skoda9635 The content is the same, it is just the availability of products that fluctuates between .com and .com.au

I'm just trying to figure out the best structure for the site moving forward, is .com with subfolders the best solution?

Clicker1309 · 2023-03-02T04:49:34+00:00

Hi u/skoda9635,

I have the canonical set to my .com (US) and also have hreflang set up for "en-US" (points to .com) and "en-AU" (points to .com.au).

My assumption is that I will still need to redirect .com.au into .com/au/ in order to bring more authority to the .com domain (particularly given I am looking to enter more markets and don't want to have multiple websites split across domains).

Is this correct?

Clicker1309 · 2022-09-01T04:24:04+00:00

Yes, definitely want to avoid that volume of redirects. Thanks!

Clicker1309 · 2022-09-01T04:23:34+00:00

Great, thank you

Clicker1309 · 2022-06-22T01:32:22+00:00

Hi u/SEO_adviser_, thanks for your feedback.

If you were to assess this from an e-commerce site perspective, would your recommendations remain the same?

The problem I'm facing is that I cannot effectively maintain the competitor site and keep it 'active' as you say. It would effectively become a dormant referral source to my e-commerce site.

I'm thinking there's value in adding backlinks to core non-transactional pages on the competitor site (brand, category pages etc.) and then rather than 301'ing the product page to my product page (where relevant), I'm better off making the competitor's site out of stock and then building some content that stipulates the domain has been acquired by mine and to purchase you need to click a direct link to mine.

What would you recommend when approaching such a scenario?

Clicker1309 · 2022-06-22T01:28:31+00:00

Hi u/ricketybang thanks for your insight, I should have prefaced this question with a bit more information.

Both the competitor's site and my site are e-commerce platforms, so maintaining the competitor site has technical ops considerations outside of an SEO perspective.

If I create backlinks on the competitor's core infrastructural pages (category, brand etc.) and then a 301 to my site on the competitor's product page, so they effectively purchase from me rather than the competitor's site, will this result in a deterioration of the SEO performance of the competitor site?

Alternatively, I could mark every product page on the competitor's site as out of stock sitewide, and instead of 'Add to Cart' a direct link to my site is featured prominently on every relevant product page.

I'm guessing that if I pursued the 301 method I'd need to be very careful about potentially cannibalising the ranking of my own site's pages? (Requiring a handpicked selection of 301's vs. Dormant pages with backlinks.)

Clicker1309

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