Fetch and render partial result could this affect SERP rankings [NSFW URL]

[GemmaApril]

Moderator's Note: URL NSFW

We have been desperately trying to understand over the last 10 days why our homepage disappears for a few days in the SERPS for our most important keywords, before reappearing again for a few more days and then gone again! We have tried everything. Checked Google webmaster - no manual actions, no crawl errors, no messages. The site is being indexed even when it disappears but when it's gone it will not even appear in the search results for our business name. Other internal pages come up instead. We have searched for bad back links. Duplicate content. We put a 301 redirect on the non www. version of the site. We added a H1 tag that was missing. Still after fetching as Google and requesting reindexing we were going through this cycle of disappearing in the rankings (an internal page would actually come in at 6th position as opposed to our home page which had previously spent years in the number 2 spot) and then coming back for a few days. Today I tried fetch and render as Google and was only getting a partial result. It was saying the video that we have embedded on our home page was temporarily unavailable. Could this have been causing the issue? We have removed the video for now and fetched and rendered and returned a complete status. I've now requested reindexing and am crossing everything that this fixes the problem. Do you think this could have been at the root of the problem?

If anyone has any other suggestions the address is NSFW https://goo.gl/dwA8YB

[soukare]

Hi Gemma,

We are having EXACTLY the same issue. We keep appearing and disappearing for some keywords (while the URL is still indexed). Also in your case when we appear we are on page 1 so its not a ranking fluctuation issue - its something else.

Did you manage to figure out what it was? It would be really helpful for us.

Thanks,

Faraz

[Dr-Pete]

I'm seeing some strange things with your home-page, even looking at your indexed pages (i.e. with the site: operator). The home-page seems to be devalued across a lot of terms (although not outright blocked or penalized).

Two possibilities:

(1) Your content is running up against some kind of adult content filter. I don't have much experience with that, but I suspect it's not the whole story here. Other content is ranking and I can get the home-page to rank on long-tail terms. Usually, Safe Search is all-or-none.

(2) You could be on the borderline of a targeted penalty -- either relating to that page or specific links and anchor text targeting that page. I'm not seeing clear evidence of that, though. You've got a chunk of links from directories, which aren't particularly high value, and that's about all I'm seeing. It may just be that the links you have aren't enough or seem to be low value, and Google's evaluation of that keeps bouncing around.

Minor thing to try, just in case you're on the border of some kind of spam threshold. Maybe tone down the double mention of "Sex Toy Party(ies)" in your Title Tag. It could be looking funny to spam and adult filters. Start with the brand name and something like "April Nites - Sex Toy Parties for Women". I'd drop "Adult", too -- I get your intent, but it just emphasizes the adult content nature more, and your home-page itself isn't problematic (I'd call it PG-13, honestly).

I'm seeing a little (minor) technical weirdness. You've got both "www" and non-www versions of pages indexed, along with a handful of sub-domains. Looks like your CMS may be creating some odd URLs, too. Not seeing anything excessive (i.e. thousands of URLs), but give that your site is small and has a relatively weak link profile, these things can add up.

Actually, you've got some really weird blog URLs indexed, like this:
http://www.aprilnites.com.au/blog/files/bb3a7ed4b561c6e8e2af28fb717a2edc-0.html

...along with a bunch of tags/categories. These odd pages are overwhelming actual, unique content. Try this command in Google to see more:
[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=aprilnites.com.au+inurl%3Ablog&gl=au]

Google is filtering out a ton of stuff, it seems. This doesn't directly explain the home-page problem but, again, it's weakening your other pages, potentially. Not sure what CMS you're running, but I haven't seen those odd URLs.

[GemmaApril]

Hello, thanks for your reply. There doesn't seem to be any movement in our competitors rankings. The video was Vimeo. We took it down about 12 hours ago and still no change so it doesn't look like it's that.  It's so stressful knowing there is a problem but not how to fix it. Really appreciate your help.

[LindsayE]

It's really hard to pinpoint the exact reason your jumping in SERPs. Anything you do to your website, adding new content or building a new link, will cause you to jump around. Your process of elimination was good, the video may or may not have had an impact on your ranks. I think it depends on what video platform you used. I'm sure you know Google owns YouTube, if the video was not already on YouTube I would add it to your channel and embed it back on your homepage.

Are you tracking your competitors? If they're jumping around too then it's nothing you did. Also, you may have new competitors going after your keywords recently which may be causing your website to ride the Google roller-coaster. I wouldn't suggest repeatedly pinging GSC to index your website... let it do it naturally. It could raise a flag if your submitting your sitemaps everyday for manual indexing.