Ranking dropped off massively: 25 August
-
HI have been working on the site http://www.schoolguide.co.uk/ we had something odd happen around the 25 of August our ranking just tanked.
- Now there was no warning in webmaster tools.
- Moz weather forecast didn't show anything crazy.
- We didn't do anything major to site.
The site lost pretty much all it's long tail ranking and about 5% of the indexed pages. What could cause this? The only thing of prominence we did was get a link from huffington post article.
Thanks again everyone
Ed
-
Hi Ed,
Something similar just happened to a website I am managing. Did you ever figure out what happened to your website? I do not have a manual action email in my GWT inbox. I got hit September 13th and today is the 22rd and still no email. I am in Argentina land
www.google.com.ar and all updates come later than in the USA.
I am also thinking it is a server issue. Got this message from GWT when trying to verify the Google Analytics code.
The connection to your server timed out.
Thanks
-
Have you checked your Google Business pages. Google just launched a major update which is driven by Google Local pages.
This might be a possible source. If your local searches dropped off then it could be that you have not got your Google Business, (was Places) up to date etc.
Keep us posted as this is interesting
Bruce
-
The ranking drop was in Google.co.uk. So Pigeon is possible, but it wasn't a small drop it's fell off the face of the earth.
The search terms we were looking at were localised though:
<colgroup><col width="246"></colgroup>
| schools in low garth |
| schools in low hawsker |
| schools in low hutton |
| schools in low mill |
| schools in lower bebington |
| schools in maentwrog |
| schools in mallwyd |
| schools in manfield |
| schools in margrove park |
| schools in marlesford |
| schools in marsett |
| schools in masham |
| schools in methersgate |
| schools in minllyn |
| schools in nantlle |
| schools in naughton |Averaging around 10 th. We are a directory so we didn't have Google local listing entries. Do you think it could be pigeon? The local page are often like this:
|
http://www.schoolguide.co.uk/best-schools-in/Seacroft
|
-
Hello EdBen...
That date seems a bit "after" the July 24th Google Pigeon update...about a month or so...but can I ask, was this rankings drop at google.com or google.co.uk?
Up here in google.ca land (Canada that is) we tend to get the changes to the major google.com algo about a few weeks after...so while Pigeon did change many things (like local listing packs, local directories, carousel items etc.) it took those weeks to be "seen" up here...
Could then, Pigeon be the culprit for your drop? Have you been able to drill-down to see if your own site has been re-ranked based on IBLs (incoming back links with authority) or new local directory reviews from say Yelp etc?
-
Your robots.txt looks good. Check your Webmaster Tools for any link domains that are spammy (such as links4you.com). It's possible you got a penalty. Are you just now noticing because you looked at Google Analytics today?
It's possible this is a link penalty. However, the only suspect linking domain I see is: http://www.cannylink.com/ - the sole purpose of that website is just for links. That is not valuable. I suggest that you look closer (I looked for 2 minutes) and see if there are any other spammy linking domains.
To remove these spammy linking domains: use the Google Disavow Tool within Webmaster Tools.
I hope this helps.
Cole
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Page dropped after backlink
This is a bit of a odd one... I put two new pages on to my website. And built one backlink to each page (each from separate domains). The pages and backlinks have indexed quite quickly. The odd thing is that one of my pages has dropped significantly in ranking but the other has boosted significantly in ranking! The 1st page has come to page 1 of google, the other pages dropped to page 3 of google. Prior to building the links the ranks was stable. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
A single page from site not ranking
Hello, We have a new site launched in March, that is ranking well in search for all of the pages, except one and we don't know why. This page it is optimised exactly the same way like the others, but still doesn't rank in Google. We have verified robots.txt for noffollow, noindex tags, we have verified if it was penalized by Google, but still didn't find nothing. Initially we had another site and was on the topic of this page, but we have redirected it to the new one. In case this old site was anytime in the past penalized by Google, could it be possible that the new page be influenced by this? Also, we have another site that ranks on the first position, that targets the same keywords like the page that does not rank. It was the first site we launched, so it is pretty much old, but we do not have duplicate content on them. Maybe Google doesn't like the fact that both target the same keywords and chooses to display only the old site? Please help us if you have any ideas or have been through such thing. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniela.pirlogea0 -
My Domain authority dropped 9 points... Does anyone have any suggestions to fix this significant drop.
My domain authority dropped by 9 points and I haven't done anything differently since the last scan. What is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | infotrust20 -
Ranking dynamic landing pages
I have a client and I'm working on a project with their development team. We're creating dynamic landing pages populated with their lead data. Similar to the style of linkedin. For example, someone searches for "demand generation manager" and one of our pages with contact information (some) shows up in the search results. www.leadgenius.com/demandgenerationjobs (or something like that. we have yet to flesh this out). We're also looking into different backlinking strategies to support optimizing the above mentioned pages in addition to their new site launching this month. What is the best way to optimize the dynamic pages as well as the main site in tandem or independently?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
3 Pages Ranking Beside Each Other | How do I consolidate so one ranks better?
An ecommerce website I own called backyardGamez.com sells outdoor games, for example cornhole boards, bags, etc. One such product is a cornhole board carrying case. If you search the above phrase, my site has three pages that rank on the first page. The term isn't high volume, so I'm assuming that is part of the reason. Is this a good, normal thing or does this mean I have inadvertently broken up my ranking power from one powerful page to 3 OK pages? Does anyone know how I can take two of these pages and use them to make the 3rd page more powerful? For example, I would prefer 1 page ranks higher on page 1 in the serps and the other two fall a bit from supporting the other. Thanks, Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Soft-Lite0 -
How to increase rankings?
I know to increase rankings involves link building, but what kind of link building is worth it and what type is not? At the moment most of my link building effort is focused on guest blogging, which has worked well for me, I have seen some good movement on a range of keywords using this tactic but I cant help but think I could get a lot more movement in the serp's if I mixed it up a little. A few other link building techniques I know of are below, but I don't really use them, so my question is what ones should I be using combined with my guest blogging to give my rankings that little extra help. 1. Directory Submissions 2. Article Submissions 3. Press Release Distribution 4. Forum Signatures 5. Blog Comments 6. Social bookmarking 7. Social Sites (Squidoo, Weebly, Wordpress, blogger) If I have missed something please let me know. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Should we always avoid drop-down menus?
In Google's SEO Guide, they say avoid the use of drop-down menus, page 12: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf But, is this always true? What if you create the drop down purely using HTML & CSS? Is it fine to use a bit of javascript to create the drop-down menu, or should it only be HTML & CSS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Strange Ranking Fluctuation - Some Predictions?
My client is the green line currently on 3 & 4. The pages that rank 3 & 4 are 3 -> home page targeted to main keyword 4 -> specific service page targeting same main keyword as home page (a bit of cannibalization) The competitor targets other keyword as their main keyword. The 1 & 2 position is taken by him but with 2 different sites (2 sites -> 1 owner). They have a high pa & da but is from gaming websites and stuff while my client has targeted good links. Any predictions... would the green go back again ? 🙂 IuVio.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mosaicpro0