Huge Hit and Bouncing Rankings Since Panda 3.3 Update?
-
Has anyone else seen rankings bouncing all over the place since the end of Feb? A client's site is for the term hcg which I know is controversial but we were in 3rd or 4th for the past couple of months until this update. Now for the term "hcg" the rankings are bouncing from the twenties to over 100 multiple times a day. I check them throughout the day with non personalized search, rank checker, etc to just try and keep updated.
I have never seen rankings bounce around so much after an update and am wondering if this update is somehow effecting these more controversial search terms.
Since The end of Feb our traffic has almost dropped in half due to the drop in just the "hcg" term ranking
We have been cleaning up the site, updating lower quality content, blogging frequently and trying to build better links for the past couple months of working on the site.The problem is there have been a few other previous SEO companies that worked on the site and I don't know how much black hat tactics were used.
Any insight or suggestions on this would be appreciated, we are all scrambling to try and recover from this.
-
I see quite a bit of flux in the Google.com SERPs that I watch closely. In retail areas I attribute some of it to the expiration of paid links for the Christmas buying season. But, overall there is a lot of flux.
Keep in mind that Google is always running test algos and we could be seeing a lot of them.
Everyone knows that google is experimenting with their Panda updates. Just recently they preached at free hosting to dump spammy sites. I speculate that they are struggling with their arrows coming down on scrapers and quality which are difficult for their algo to separate.
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
-
Traffic, rankings and own manual note in one interface, please :)
Hey guys, I really hope that such a tool exists out there. Here's the problem. My boss asked me to create a graph that shows the traffic, rankings and notes on our site updates in one place. Here's what I did I just made a screenshot of my Google analytics and rankings from RankTracker. Then I added it all in one Photoshop file and tried to combine them so that I can see if traffic drops coincided with keyword drops. Also, I added some manual notes about the updates on my site (like text updates on the homepage, etc). So, is there a tool that allows to combine Google traffic data with ranking data. Plus it should allow to add my own comments ? Here's the result of my crazy drawings so that you understand why I'm not happy about doing that in Photoshop 🙂 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_oX-XIT7OSCRC1jWUcxR3AwdkE/edit?usp=drive_web
Industry News | | VinceWicks0 -
Paid links from directory listing and business listing sites are good or bad according to Penguin 2.1 update?
Hi Friends, Recently on October 4<sup>th</sup>, 2013, a new spam filtering algorithm got live named Penguin 21. / Penguin 5. The update goes after sites that may have purchased paid links. I would like to know is it safe, if we submit website details with links in paid directories, eg: https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/ (yahoo directory) and quality business listing sites provided the categories are related to our website. Our competitor sites having the backlinks from those kind of directories and they are performing (ranking) well in major search engines. May I know how Google treat these kinds of links according to this recent algorithm update?
Industry News | | zco_seo0 -
Webmaster Tools Keyword Rankings Explanation
While analyzing the Google Webmaster, I found several keywords that are ranked in the top 10 search results with words such as: they, was, mai, and chiang. (For example:they)After reviewing the top pages shown under the keyword "they", I did not find the keyword or its variant "them" repeated in the content of the page. I am not sure why "they" is ranking so high and of course, the word "they' is not effective for finding significant content. Also word such as Chiang Mai are never used separately but the two words are ranking far apart from each other. Mai is ranked at 5 and chiang is ranked at 11. I would think that the rankings would be very close together since the two words are usually used in conjunction with one another. Can anyone explain the reason this may be happening please?
Industry News | | jimmyzig0 -
Penguin 2.0 Update - Just Hit - Google Messes up again, can anyone on SEOMOZ please tell me why or how some of these websites are ranking?
I am getting a bit tired now writing all of this so please excuse grammar and spelling mistakes, I wanted to post this up quickly tonight so I could possibly get some feedback by morning. So I feel I figured out some of the new update that just hit and I am sure the update will continue to keep coming and rankings will most likely change for a while, but I do have a few questions in the mean time if they stay. Please look below, why would some of those sites be ranking? Some sites utilize no onpage SEO, some no backlinks, one of the sites is a single page site and every page is a broken link even the contact us page and it's rank 1..... I am not 100% sure that Google got this one right. I see many instances below where other sites are much higher quality and have more authority. It's as if Google took terrible sites and said here is a site for you, now deal with it and I hope it works out at the top. I do see several sites that belong on the first page, but I see others that are very questionable. This is how the following is written below. Before the url is the anchor text density % for the site. This indicates the percentage of the amount of times the anchor text was backlined versus other anchor texts they used. Issues with the sites. Most of these sites don't utilize onpage SEO and it's clearly not a factor for onpage density purposes, there is a site with 37% keyword density on it. Some sites even have broken links. Please note: I already know that there is a lot of data that is analyzed to determine rankings more than this, but PA/DA is suppose to be a major factor according to everyone that believes in SEOMOZ.org. So I am taking in account for many of those factors being calculated due to this. These are just some random keywords I picked, because I know you need to analyze other SEO firms after and update to figure out what lasted and what didn't. All of my sites lasted due to ethical tactics, but I had some rankings move down and others go up, very odd. Keyword Analyzed: CHEAP SEO Not Knowng http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585 92-DA 75-PA - A lot of content 4715 words on the page including comments. not known http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-cheap-seo-or-link-building/45932/ 87DA 63 PA Words on page 3673 Not known www.cheap-seo-solutions.com 26 DA -- 38 PA 1112 words on page 9.52% www.cheapseocompany.com 34 DA ---- 41 PA 10 + anchor texts but 623 words on page 10.26% seocheap.net 35 DA --- 45 PA 10 + anchor text 855 words on the page I am not 100% sure why this is ranking lol, the services page isn't even working it errors out. The onpage SEO is sloppy and the writing looks forced. Why is this even ranking? The site also looks low quality. The density is higher than SEOMOZ even and it has less words. In this case DA + words carried this site up, not the anchor ratio being low. 6.17% http://www.cheapseo-services.com cheap seo Page Authority DA 28 -- PA 38 276 Words No onpage, 35 duplicate pages, free template, etc.. etc.. 10% www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-seo-cheap DA 94 --- PA 56 only 5 anchor texts used on this page. 8651 Words I am willing to bet if you diversified this with about 5 more anchor texts this could be number 1 easy. This only has 5 total diverse anchor text backlinks for this page. Keyword Analyzed: Affordable SEO Services Rank 1 47% www.affordableseoservicesx.com/ 24DA PA36 New site It still has broken links all over the page The Contact us page doesn't even work lol. Great going Google on ranking such a high quality 1 page website. 471 words How is this site ranking? How could Google even rank this site? Rank 2 The Term isn't mentioned at all accept in title and header not known mbseoservice.com/ da 20 pa 32 PR 0 Just has affordable seo services in title anchor Possible New Site 627 words Rank 4 12.77% affordableseoservices.net 22 DA 35 DA - Proof Exact match domains still work great with high diversity rates, low word amounts, bad DA, etc..... 348 words Rank 5 4.24% www.howardsemgroup.com DA 39 PA 49 893 words. Rank 6 2.49% www.i4.net/ 59 DA and 66 PA 588 words Rank 7 4.71% www.bluefrogseosolutions.com/ DA 31 PA 42 527 Words This site looks like it was created in 1998 and never updated. Low quality site IMO Rank 8 Not Known www.mainstreethost.com/ 76 DA 81 PA possible co occurrence added in with main domain name /url 281 Words not 1 exact anchor text match Rank 10 2.7% bestcheapseoservices.com/ 18 DA 29PA This is just a blog site, come on Google... 4379 Words
Industry News | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
Any Information on Panda Update #21?
A site we've been working on and doing well with (relatively new) got hit pretty hard on November 4th and 5th. Since then, traffic is down considerably and we're trying to diagnose what specific triggers may have caused such a change.
Industry News | | d50-Media0 -
About Ranking
I have a question regarding keywords and ranking I am running a campaign using "Conference venues Park Lane" as one of the keyword. I am already in first place google with that keywords but not the the right landing page. How can I fix that. Google is sending to the wedding landing page and not the conference one. Any idea?
Industry News | | lnietob0 -
Why has my places ranking dropped off google?
I've recently worked for a company who up untill 3 weeks ago have shown up in the google places ranked at number 1 for the following key phrases. First Aid Training in Cornwall
Industry News | | it-ok
First Aid Courses in Cornwall
Health and Safety Training in Cornwall as well as several more... However over the past 3 weeks they have gradually dropped out of the places listing all together, and I'm struggling to understand why this might be. Yesterday I released a new website for them which has had a lot more SEO input in to the site, is this likely to have an affect on the places ranking? the website is www.insafehandstraining.com Any answers would be very appreciated.0 -
Pagerank updates and expectations
My site (http://www.bluedotlandscaping.com) has recently been redone. Although I have been online for about 9 years, we have never before done SEO. My Google PR is 0. With a lot of work the last 3-5 months we have gotten a MozRank of 3.55. (DA 26 and MozTrust 4.36) What do you think are reasonable expectations? Does Google update often? Is a jump from a PR of 0 to 3 reasonable? If my site does go to a PR of 3, will I see a noticeable change in my keyword rankings? Thanks for your help. Rich
Industry News | | SCyardman0