Has there been an algorithm change in the last week?
-
Hi guys,
Rankings for almost half of our targeted keywords have gone down this week vs. last week.
I have checked a couple of rank trackers and all are reporting some serious movement in Google's algorithms during this period.
Does anyone have any further information on this that can help me restore our rankings? I haven't read anything in regards to any 'major' pending updates.
Many thanks in advance,
Jack
-
Thanks, Donna.
My plan is to not have a knee-jerk reaction to this, and as you say, just see how things play out over the next week or so.
Many thanks for your response - I really appreciate it.
-
Hi Jack,
I saw your question a few days ago and didn't respond thinking I'd wait and see if there was talk of an update in the SEO forums. There hasn't been any.
As you probably know, Google updates its ranking algorithm 500-600 times a year. Only the larger, more disruptive ones get talked about in the forums. You may be witnessing one of the smaller ones. I know I have seen some fluctuations this week.
As to what to do about it, if you're playing by the rules I'd sit tight and see if things normalize over the coming few weeks. It's not unusual for there to be significant changes that eventually reverse. If things don't normalize, then you're going to have to do some comparative analysis to figure out what you need to do to catch up again.
Not a specific answer - sorry, there isn't one. I could be so many different things.
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
-
50% Organic Traffic Drop In the last 48 Hours
Hello, My site had a 50% decrease in the last 48 hours (9/26/18) and I looking for ideas/reasons what would cause such a dramatic drop. Year to year organic traffic has been up 40% and September was up 30%. The site has a domain authority of 39 according to Moz and keywords positions have been flat for a few months. I made a change to the code and robots.txt file on Monday, pre-drop. The category pagination pages had a "NoIndex" with a rel =canonical and I removed the "NoIdnex" per: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-noindex-rel-canonical-confusion-26079.html. I also removed "Disallow" in the robots.txt for stuff like "/?dir" because the pages have the rel =canonical. Could this be the reason for drop?? Other possible reasons:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chuck-layton
1. Google Update: I dont think this is it, but ti looks like the last one was August 1st: "Medic" Core Update — August 1, 2018
2. Site was hacked
3. All of keyword positions dropped overnight: I dont think this is it because Bing has also dropped at the same percentage. Any help, thoughts or suggestions would be awesome.0 -
Changing URLs
URLs of my web pages are based on the titles of pages. For sampel, if a title page is called "product ABC", then the URL for this page is /product-abc. Google and all other search engines have indexed all pages. Now I want to change the titles of some sites. Should I change the URLs accordingly, or should I rather leave URLs as they are. SEO Best Practice says that keywords must be placed both in the title, and in the URL. I think that Google will think that pages have douplicate content with diffrent titles, and it comes to many 404 error, if I change the URLs. What do you recommend in this case?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kian_moz0 -
Need to update Google Search Console profile for http to https change. Will a "change of address" option suffice or do we need to create a new GSC profile?
In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL. However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106. Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Dynamically Changing pages same content
Hey there Mozzers, I have a commerce site that is dynamically adding more products in the same page when you scroll down. I have added SEO Content on the footer of the page. The url is changing when you scroll to ?page-2, ?page-3 and so on. The content stays the same even though the page is dynamically changing. Is there a way to solve that issue? Should I always use canonical pointing to the initial page thus solving the duplication but indicate rel=next and rel=prev to the other pages etc? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS0 -
Google's Exact Match Algorithm Reduced Our Traffic!
Google's first Panda de-valued our Web store, www.audiobooksonline.com, and our traffic went from 2500 - 3000 (mostly organic referrals) per month to 800 - 1000. Google's under-valuing of our Web store continued to reduce our traffic to 400-500 for the past few months. From 4/5/2013 to 4/6/2013 our traffic dropped 50% more, because (I believe) of Google's "exact domain match" algorithm implementation. We were, even after Panda and up to 4/5/2013 getting a significant amount of organic traffic for search terms such as "audiobooks online," "audio books online," and "online audiobooks." We no longer get traffic for these generic keywords. What I don't understand is why a UK company, www.audiobooksonline.co.uk/, with a very similar domain name, ranks #5 for "audio books online" and #4 for "audiobooks online" while we've almost disappeared from Google rankings. By any measurement I am aware of, our site should rank higher than audiobooksonline.co.uk. Market Samurai reports for "audio books online" and "audiobooks online" shows that our Web store is significantly "stronger" than audiobooksonline.co.uk but they show up on Google's first page and we are down several pages. I also checked a few titles on audiobooksonline.co.uk and confirmed they are using the same publisher descriptions we and many other online book / audiobook merchants do = duplicate content. We have never received notice that our Web store was being penalized. Why would audiobooksonline.co.uk rank so much higher than audiobooksonline.com? Does Google treat non-USA sites different than USA sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen0 -
301 vs Changing Link href
We have changed our company and want to 301 old domain from new domain in order to transfer the benefits of backlinks (DA: 50, 115 Linking Root Domains). I have the ability to modify around 50% of the backlinks. So my question is: Instead of redirecting all the links, should I update the 50% to link to the new domain instead of relying on redirects? Would this possibly trip an algorithmic filter and devalue these links? Or should I just do a 301 and not worry about modifying the links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0 -
Changing server today, any SEO implications or advice you may have?
Morning, We're moving our site to a new server today and having never done so before in an SEO capacity, are there any SEO implications, pitfalls, things to watch out for? Advice and comments appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
How do I go about changing a 302 redirect to a 301.
Hello Friends! Thanks for viewing my question. Ok,My question today is How do I go about redirecting a 302 link to a 301 link. I understand the benefits of doing this as far as link juice and how the Search Engines views the two Re-Directs. I am wanting to know where I would start to do this. Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0