Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Page position dropped on Google

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Page position dropped on Google

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    9
    1283
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • TextStylesUK
      TextStylesUK last edited by

      Hey Guys,

      My web designer has recommended this forum to use, the reason being: my google position has been dropped from page 1 to page 10 in the last week.

      The site is weloveschoolsigns.co.uk, but our main business site is textstyles.co.uk

      the school signs are a product of text styles.

      I have been told off my SEO company, that because I have changed the school logo to the text styles logo, Google have penalised me for it, and dropped us from page 1 for numerous keywords, to page 10 or more.

      They have also said that duplicate content within the school site  http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/school-signs-made-easy/ has also a contributed to the drop in positions. (this content is not on the textstyles site)

      Lastly they said, that having the same telephone number is a definate no no. They said that I have been penalised, because google see the above as trying to monopolise on the market.

      I don’t know if all this is true, as the SEO is way above my head, but they have quoted me £1250 to repair all the errors, when the site only cost £750.

      They have also mentioned that because of the above changes, the main text styles site will also be punished.

      Any thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated as I don't know whether to pay them to crack on, or accept the new positions.

      Either way I'm very confused.

      Thanks

      Thomas

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Masoko-T
        Masoko-T @TextStylesUK last edited by

        Hi Thomas

        Did you agree with the SEO people a list of KW to rank on?. I just ran a simple search with some kw on google.co.uk and the rankings I found were

        aluminium school signs    5    
        safety signs    50+    
        school sign company    7    
        school signs    50+    
        school signs in aluminium    5    
        we love school designs    50+

        So you are at least on first page for some of the KW in your title tags and that describe your business. This is not what you expect to see if your website drops to the 10th page of Google's results.

        Try downloading a program called "free google monitor" from cleverstat, Use it to find your ranking for the KW that are important for you. You probably still rank well enough on them.

        In my opinion the SEO company is giving you a vague list of what they will do. The activities they list are not wrong, but since they lack detail I would not be comfortable with giving my business to them. I think they are not being straightforward with you on what happened, why it did and what is it exactly that they will do about it.

        You should probably get a quote from some other (quality) SEO companies.

        Cheers

        Jorge

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Smartloan
          Smartloan @TextStylesUK last edited by

          Hi Thomas

          Firstly, i would suggest having two sites is not you trying to monopolies the market. There are many companies out there that have several sites all connected to each other and who are selling various types of products. Have one page about a product you sell and then developing a website within that niche to sell that one product shouldn't be an issue.  I have worked with websites before that have done what you have done.

          However, i am assuming they designed your other site as well as your main site? At which point this didn't point out their "concerns"?

          The last Penguin 2.1 update was around October and the one before that in May. The Penguin update is meant to improve the search results by targeting spam website. Those that have bought links or who have been adding their website to websites specifically boost Google Rankings. This article should explain it better. http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-penguin-update

          I noticed that you said there is no Google Analytic in place? This is very odd for a company that is meant to be doing your SEO. How do they track anything or even see what keywords your customers are coming in onto your site.

          I would suggest that they have dropped the ball, if they ever had it. Now your site is suffering and they are blaming Google for it. If they had always been doing your SEO and correctly then there shouldn't have been such a massive dip in your listings. Yes sometimes you can be unlucky. However, from what you have said and the way that Penguin works it shouldn't have affected you this much because of one page and one website.

          I would advise you not to pay the £1250 plus VAT. Firstly that is a large amount of money. I would also suggest that you consider shopping around for a new SEO company. That would be my personal thoughts after doing SEO for a few years.

          Bex

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TextStylesUK
            TextStylesUK @Masoko-T last edited by

            Thanks Jorge,This is what they emailed me.  (sorry it's long)

            below would be best route to take, but this would mean you losing http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/- this would stop the possibility of a ban being sanction too www.textstyles.co.uk and give you the best chance to regain rankings quickly and cost free.

            If however you really want to salvage www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk we can help but it will take time and a lot of hard work, there will be costs but we will not add on mark-ups and you would only pay for time and back link building costs involved.

            £1250 + vat would help cover the onsite work, rewriting the content, template coding enhancements for inner pages, and a targeted high value back links programme run over 8 weeks.  We would normally charge around £1750 + vat for this, has it is a lot of work and will take up much time and resources.

            We have shown you we can rank a website, and we maintained rankings for many months, we really want to help you regain rankings to help you out and continue the business relationship and has we suggested above there is a quick and free fix by pushing this website into your main one, but if you want to go with this second choice, I would advise acting fast, or you run a risk of your main website getting a google ban for a web ring.

            From our side we will need to do the following.

            1 – Re-optimise the website sitewide.

            A – Where possible split the content up, to show a little at the top of a page and the rest at the bottom.

            B – Some pages may need rewriting from new, has google has taken away the content credits from them.

            C – Work on high value back links to help regain google trust.

            D – Work with google webmaster tools to ensure any tweaks are corrected.

            E – Help regain content credits to your top level homepage - https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Using+the+best+materials+to+create+vivid+and+imaginative+signs+that+can+easily+be+tailored+to+match+any+particular+schools+preferences,+here+at+weloveschoolsigns.co.uk,+our+attention+is+purely%22&hl=en-GB&rlz=1T4ADRA_enGB440GB440&filter=0&biw=1680&bih=884

            You can help out by ..

            1 - Replacing the phone number with a new one.

            2 – Replacing the logo and any reference to text styles from the website.

            2a:  An example here is http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/about-us/ you mention “Text Styles UK Ltd” in the first and end sections.

            Thanks Thomas

            Masoko-T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Masoko-T
              Masoko-T @TextStylesUK last edited by

              This is very odd.

              I propose the following: ask your SEO company to put into writing what they told you by phone and to send it to you. I can give you and unbiased opinion if you send me their reply by private message. Please note that while I'm not an authority in SEO and I do not do consulting, at least I think I can help you determine if your SEO company is telling you something that makes sense or not.

              Also ask them to give you a detailed quote on this 1250 quid job to "fix" your site's position. I agree with Bex when he writes that the amount is extremely high for such a job.

              Cheers

              Jorge

              TextStylesUK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • TextStylesUK
                TextStylesUK @Smartloan last edited by

                Hi Bex,

                Thanks for your reply.

                The duplicate content has been in place since day 1 and I agree they should have spotted this.

                We are a printing company, who supply anything from promotional pens, polo shirts, signs etc,

                The school signs is a product of ours, which has a simple page on our main site textstyles.co.uk, our new site is designed especially for the school sign market.  weloveschoolsigns.co.uk

                This is what they are saying about me trying to monopolis eteh market, they said google hate this,  and as a result dropped me to page 10.

                The penalty they say, comes under the last penguin 2-1 update, but this is way over my head...haha

                Thanks for your email, and I appreciate your feedback

                Thanks Thomas

                Smartloan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • TextStylesUK
                  TextStylesUK @Masoko-T last edited by

                  Hi Masoko,

                  Thanks for your feedback,Yes, pretty much. They just mentioned that my recent editing in wordpress, change of logo etc, allowed google to spot that it is a micro site from our main company.

                  As a result, they said I'm now on page 10.

                  I didn't notice the drop myself, and I also hadn't checked my position recently.

                  There is no google webmaster in place or google analytics, and I have had no message from google, only the phone call from my SEO team, informing me of the drop.

                  Thanks again

                  Thomas

                  Masoko-T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Smartloan
                    Smartloan last edited by

                    Hello

                    I worked for an agency for a little while in SEO and i can tell you the people getting in the business weren't always good at explaining the full truth to customers when it came to SEO. Which upset me greatly.

                    Can you maybe explain more where this duplicate content in? I am a bit confused by your link. I would also agree with the other person who has answered. Simply changing your logo shouldn't result in such a drop in positions. What i would suggest it could be is bad backlinking. The reason i say this is because the Agency i left had no SEO person for 6 months after me. All sites were doing well then after i left they just anyone to just do the SEO. This resulted in people constantly link building to sites that were no good. Then one company crumbled in the SERPS their traffic dropping for 10,000 a month to about 2,000 a month in what should be their busiest time. A friend of mine who worked there still kept me up to date on the situation told me their rankings went from page 1 all the way back to page 5 for keywords they had ranked highly on for a long time.

                    I believe their only option in the end was to take down the site and relaunch on a new domain to break the links with the old bad sites. I believe they seemed to have picked up in traffic slightly.

                    So in answer to your question this could be the problem. Duplicate content shouldn't cause such a drop. However, surely your SEO company should be making sure there is no duplicate content? As for the phone number i haven't heard that before. If it is in the header or the footer, i shouldn't think it will make much difference. AS there are plenty of companies out there that have the same registered address but are different companies. This info is on the website in the footer normally and their websites are being penalised.

                    They want to charge you £1250! When i worked in an Agency it was about £40per hour. When i do freelance i charge 20 per hour. Based on those figures they say it is going to take 31 hours to fix!! As i assume you will have to pay VAT on top. I am not sure how they can say 31 hours is the amount of time it will take to fix. What are they going to be doing on it? I would demand a breakdown of exactly what they are doing for that money.

                    Also can you confirm if both sites are selling the same products or to the same market place?

                    Hope this helps.

                    TextStylesUK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • Masoko-T
                      Masoko-T last edited by

                      Hello

                      What was the developer's argument exactly? I mean, did they give you more information or just told you: "hey, you changed the logo and now you're on page 10"?. I think it is preposterous and unprofessional to say such a thing. A simple change of a logo should not wipe out your rankings.

                      Did you notice the drop yourself or did the developer inform you of it? Who does the rank tracking usually?. Do you have access to your Google Webmaster tools? If so, have you received a message from Google informing you that your site was being hit by a manual penalty?

                      TextStylesUK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • amag

                        Would You Redirect a Page if the Parent Page was Redirected?

                        Hi everyone! Let's use this as an example URL: https://www.example.com/marvel/avengers/hulk/ We have done a 301 redirect for the "Avengers" page to another page on the site. Sibling pages of the "Hulk" page live off "marvel" now (ex: /marvel/thor/ and /marvel/iron-man/). Is there any benefit in doing a 301 for the "Hulk" page to live at /marvel/hulk/ like it's sibling pages? Is there any harm long-term in leaving the "Hulk" page under a permanently redirected page? Thank you! Matt

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amag
                        0
                      • Tylerj

                        Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?

                        I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj
                        0
                      • seoeuroflorist

                        Google Adsbot crawling order confirmation pages?

                        Hi, We have had roughly 1000+ requests per 24 hours from Google-adsbot to our confirmation pages. This generates an error as the confirmation page cannot be viewed after closing or by anyone who didn't complete the order. How is google-adsbot finding pages to crawl that are not linked to anywhere on the site, in the sitemap or linked to anywhere else? Is there any harm in a google crawler receiving a higher percentage of errors - even though the pages are not supposed to be requested. Is there anything we can do to prevent the errors for the benefit of our network team and what are the possible risks of any measures we can take? This bot seems to be for evaluating the quality of landing pages used in for Adwords so why is it trying to access confirmation pages when they have not been set for any of our adverts? We included "Disallow: /confirmation" in the robots.txt but it has continued to request these pages, generating a 403 page and an error in the log files so it seems Adsbot doesn't follow robots.txt. Thanks in advance for any help, Sam

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoeuroflorist
                        0
                      • Online-Marketing-Guy

                        Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages

                        Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
                        About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
                        Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
                        Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
                        Jochen

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
                        0
                      • vivekrathore

                        Google indexing pages from chrome history ?

                        We have pages that are not linked from site yet they are indexed in Google. It could be possible if Google got these pages from browser. Does Google takes data from chrome?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore
                        0
                      • sparrowdog

                        Is there a way to get a list of Total Indexed pages from Google Webmaster Tools?

                        I'm doing a detailed analysis of how Google sees and indexes our website and we have found that there are 240,256 pages in the index which is way too many. It's an e-commerce site that needs some tidying up. I'm working with an SEO specialist to set up URL parameters and put information in to the robots.txt file so the excess pages aren't indexed (we shouldn't have any more than around 3,00 - 4,000 pages) but we're struggling to find a way to get a list of these 240,256 pages as it would be helpful information in deciding what to put in the robots.txt file and which URL's we should ask Google to remove. Is there a way to get a list of the URL's indexed? We can't find it in the Google Webmaster Tools.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sparrowdog
                        0
                      • desmond.liang

                        Our login pages are being indexed by Google - How do you remove them?

                        Each of our login pages show up under different subdomains of our website. Currently these are accessible by Google which is a huge competitive advantage for our competitors looking for our client list. We've done a few things to try to rectify the problem: -  No index/archive to each login page Robot.txt to all subdomains to block search engines gone into webmaster tools and added the subdomain of one of our bigger clients then requested to remove it from Google (This would be great to do for every subdomain but we have a LOT of clients and it would require tons of backend work to make this happen.) Other than the last option, is there something we can do that will remove subdomains from being viewed from search engines? We know the robots.txt are working since the message on search results say: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." But we'd like the whole link to disappear.. Any suggestions?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | desmond.liang
                        1
                      • HrThomsen

                        Best practice for removing indexed internal search pages from Google?

                        Hi Mozzers I know that it’s best practice to block Google from indexing internal search pages, but what’s best practice when “the damage is done”? I have a project where a substantial part of our visitors and income lands on an internal search page, because Google has indexed them (about 3 %). I would like to block Google from indexing the search pages via the meta noindex,follow tag because: Google Guidelines: “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.” http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 Bad user experience The search pages are (probably) stealing rankings from our real landing pages Webmaster Notification: “Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site” with links to our internal search results I want to use the meta tag to keep the link juice flowing. Do you recommend using the robots.txt instead? If yes, why? Should we just go dark on the internal search pages, or how shall we proceed with blocking them? I’m looking forward to your answer! Edit: Google have currently indexed several million of our internal search pages.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HrThomsen
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.