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.
Why my website disappears for the keywords ranked, then reappears and so on?
-
Hello to everyone.
In the last 2 weeks my website emorroidi.imieirimedinaturali.it has a strange behavior in SERP: it disappears for the keywords ranked and then reappears, and so on.
Here's the chronicle of the last days:
12/6: message in GWT: Improvement of the visibility of the website in search.
12/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked
16/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked with some keywords higher in ranking
18/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked
22/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked
24/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked...
I can't explain this situation. Could it be a penalty? What Kind?
Thank you.
-
Hi Paul,
This question is marked as "answered," so there aren't many SEOs reading it, unless they have the same problem as you! Please post a new question, so we can get the right people to answer.
Best,
Kristina
-
Yeah Kristina,
the keywords are:
- emorroidi cura
- emorroidi rimedi
- cure emorroidi
- curare le emorroidi
- emorroidi cure
- emorroidi rimedi naturali
- emorroidi esterne
- alimentazione emorroidi
The website actually ranks in Google.it with the homepage for them all, except the last two that rank with the relative page.
Thank you very much,
Emanuele
-
Yeah, I'm not sure. One idea would be an algorithmic penalty that is rechecked every few days (although most articles I've read say that algorithmic penalties are applied and then stay applied long after the problem has been fixed). Another is that someone at Google applied a penalty manually, then someone else removed it, then someone else put it back on again.
But neither of those seem likely.
At this point, all I can think of is looking into the keywords themselves. I haven't done that so far, though, because I don't know Italian. Can you share them anyway, though, so someone else in the community can help?
-
Hi Kristina,
- Yes, during the times where I'm not ranking for most keywords, my homepage ranks for the brand name;
- I haven't got any else message in Google Webmaster Tools;
In your opinion what kind of "poorly applied penalty" could it be? An algorithmic one I suppose...
-
Weird. So, that means that this isn't because of problems with Google's crawler not finding your content, and it's not that you are ranking for keywords that just fluctuate all the time anyway. My next guess would be that this is a poorly applied penalty of some sort. A couple of questions to see if it is:
- During the times where you're not ranking for most keywords, does your homepage rank for your brand name?
- Have you gotten any other messages in Google Webmaster Tools / Search Console since the original "Improved search visibility" that you mentioned in your original question?
Best,
Kristina
-
Hi Kristina,
- I mean that all the pages are indexed;
- I haven't analized very well my competitors in these days, however in the days my website disappears, it seems that the other websites that compete for my keywords don't fluctuate, or not so much: the SERPs remain almost equal.
Thank you,
Emanuele
-
Hi Emanuele,
To clarify:
- When you say you've verified it with a site: search, do you mean that you verified that the pages that were no longer ranking were still indexed? Or, do you mean that you verified that the site itself was still indexed? I'm wondering if you're only losing certain pages.
- I'm not sure what you meant by your response about your competition. Are you saying that the competition doesn't fluctuate for the keywords that your site is fluctuating for?
Thanks,
Kristina
-
Hi Kristina,
thank you for the answer.
About your points:
- On the days where my site stops ranking for keywords it is correctly indexed, I've verified it with site: command;
- when the website disappears, any keyword stays at the same rank, neither the long tail keywords.
- I haven't made any change to on page or off page factors since the website started to disappear and the reappear.
Best,
Emanuele
-
Hi Emanuele,
Wow, that's really weird! A few questions:
- On the days where your site stops ranking for keywords, have you done a site: search on those pages to see if Google has them in its index?
- What is your competition for these keywords? Have they been changing around a lot too, or is everything else staying about the same rank, with your site just jumping in and out of the list?
- Have you been making any changes to the site during this time? Even if you didn't change the specific page in question, it's possible that changing the link structure of the site is drastically changing their ability to rank.
Best,
Kristina
-
Hi Daniel,
thank you for the answer.
In the days the website disappears, there are drops in organic ranking like images attached. All the pages with ranked keywords disappear.
-
Ciao Emanuele!
If you seem to be experiencing ranking issues, the best way you can see if there is something to worry about or not is by seeing if there have been any drops in organic sessions on analytics. Has there been a drop?
If there is a pattern to the types of keywords which you seem to not be rankng for, you should check in analytics to see if the pages on your site which correspond to the keywords are losing organic traffic or not. Example: keyword A will be most relevant to example.com/page-a
Search results are different for different users, based on location, which version of Google you are using, whether you are signed in to Google not etc. so don't be too concerned unless traffic is also affected.
Additionally, the message in GWTs on 12/6 isn't something to worry about. I have also seen this message for many of the sites I manage and it is really just Google giving some tips such as defining a target country, giving access to other users, creating XML sitemaps etc.
Let us know if you are also experiencing drops in traffic!
-
Hi Hector,
thank you for the answer.
Yes, I always use Moz Rank Tracker and also I search logged off and with the same geolocalization...
-
That kind of behaviour is really strange. Are you always searching from the same computer, and always logged off -or at least always in the same Google Account? Seems like you are getting some kind of customized experience based on your geolocalization, browsing history, Google Account or something like that.
For checking your ranks, always use an external tool like MOZ.
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
-
Why has my website been removed from Bing?
I have a website that has recently been removed from Bing's index, but can't figure out why. The website isn't new, and it is indexed just fine on Google. These are the steps I've tried: The website is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools and successfully submitted the sitemap. I tested the URL to ensure that Bingbot is allowed to crawl the site I submitted URLs to Bing via the URL Submission tool There isn't a "noindex" on the site preventing it from being indexed When I do a URL Inspection, an error message comes up saying "The inspected URL is known to Bing but has some issues which are preventing us from serving it to our users. We recommend you to follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines." I contacted Bing to ask whether the website was removed in error, but received a reply that the website doesn't comply with Bing's quality guidelines, but they wouldn't go into detail as to which guidelines the website isn't meeting. The website URL is https://www.pardeehospital.org. Can anyone offer any advice or insight as to why Bing won't index our site? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lindsey.steinkamp0 -
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
Page rank and menus
Hi, My client has a large website and has a navigation with main categories. However, they also have a hamburger type navigation in the top right. If you click it it opens to a massive menu with every category and page visible. Do you know if having a navigation like this bleeds page rank? So if all deep pages are visible from the hamburger navigation this means that page rank is not being conserved to the main categories. If you click a main category in the main navigation (not the hamburger) you can see the sub pages. I think this is the right structure but the client has installed this huge menu to make it easier for people to see what there is. From a technical SEO is this not bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AL123al0 -
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
Hi All, I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Newly designed page ranks in Google but then disappears - at a loss as to why.
Hi all, I wondered if you could help me at all please? We run a site called getinspired365.com (which is not optimised) and in the last 2 weeks have tried to optimise some new pages that we have added. For example, we have optimised this page - http://getinspired365.com/lifes-a-bit-like-mountaineering-never-look-down This page was added to Google's index via webmaster tools. When I then did a search for the full quote it came back 2nd in Google's search. If I did a search for half the quote (Life is a bit like mountaineering) it also ranked 2nd. We had another quote page that we'd optimised that displayed similar behaviour (it ranked 4th). But then for some reason when I now do the search it doesn't rank in the top 100 results. This, despite, an unoptimised "normal" page ranking 4th for a search such as: Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered. So our domain doesn't seem to be penalised as our "normal" pages are ranking. These pages aren't particularly well designed from an SEO standpoint. But our new pages - which are optimised - keep disappearing from Google, despite the fact they still show as indexed. I've rendered the pages and everything appears fine within Google Webmaster Tools. At a bit of a loss as to why they'd drop so significantly? A few pages I could understand but they've all but been removed. Any one seen this before, and any ideas what could be causing the issue? We have a different URL structure for our new pages in that we have the quote appear in the URL. All the content (bar the quote) that you see in the new pages are unique content that we've written ourselves. Could it be that we've over optimised and Google view these pages as spam? Many thanks in advance for all your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWhyley0