Massive 40-50 page drop for primary keyphrase, no apparent reason, + map listing weirdness
-
Hi. I manage the site http://physiowinnipeg.com, which has had some interesting yo-yo effects lately, culminating in a 40-50 page drop as of last Friday.
The phrase in question: physiotherapy winnipeg
Background:
-
The site has ranked on the first page for this keyphrase since about May
-
There was the occasional blip where the homepage would disappear from rankings altogether for a day or two, and then return back to its regular listing
- This would coincide with a sudden increase in organic places listings (our site would hit the top of the local map listings, but the homepage would vanish)
- Other pages would still appear for the target phrase, just not the homepage
- About a month ago, the organic places listing settled, and the homepage permanently vanished
- Other pages still ranked high, and we commanded many of the listings on the first 10 pages of Google, first page included
- The homepage would still appear for some other searches
- We had been affected by the Google Places --> Google+ Local transition, so I was of the opinion that we needed to wait it out a bit to see if it, like the other issues related to the transition, would work itself out
-
This time around, it worked itself out again, just today -- but we are now ranked slightly lower on the first page and our Google local listing has disappeared (again)
-
Our other pages are still (currently) absent from the first few pages, for this keyphrase
-
The main differences I noticed here, aside from the much longer timeframe of our drop, was that other pages disappeared as well, and that the homepage was actually found, between page 38 and 50, depending on the day
According to SEO Moz and other tools, the site is doing pretty much everything right. I should note, however, that there is a service we use for educational content called Patientsites that loads in the subdomain http://education.physiowinnipeg.com -- and this site has pulled many warnings in SEO Moz (around 10,000, actually, mostly long URL related), as well as a few errors. I'm not sure if this is a part of the problem, but I am considering having the content of the subdomain blocked via robots.txt and Webmaster Tools.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar, or have any insight? This weirdness has gone on too long.
Thanks!
Bobby
-
-
I found Marie's comments very interesting. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be my problem.
I agree with Marie's advice not to do anything to respond to a perceived penalty. Doesn't look like your site is "penalized" but the swings are extreme.
-
Thanks Marie. I appreciate the response and the advice. That was my initial thought, as well, when it first started happening -- it seems to be getting worse though. Hence my concern. Have you hear of anyone else having a similar issue with the map and site listing never being on at the same time?
-
I've seen a number of sites recently that seem to drop out of the search rankings and then reappear (often at a higher position). I think Google is testing some things.
I did 3 searches on G.ca for your search term. The first time you were at the top of page 2, but there were only 3 organic listings and then map listings on page 1. The second time I didn't see you and the third time you were on page one just under the maps listings.
Google's definitely up to something. Don't go doing anything rash right now. This is unlikely to be because of a penalty.
-
Thanks, JustDucky. I suppose it could be an adjustment of those values, but as above, wouldn't you think the exact phrase would be affected -- and would that explain the map listing and page listing only having one active at a time?
-
Thanks for the suggestion, Elias.
I considered the EMD update, but I doubt it's the cause. That wouldn't explain the flip flopping of the organic map and site results, which I am pretty sure pre-dates that update. Also, we have always (and still do) come in at number 1 for the search term "physio winnipeg" -- if it were the EMD update, I would have expected that search to be affected as well.
-
My EMD site dropped from 12 (on last Saturday's MOZ report) to 41 (last night) to 32 a few minute ago for the EMD keyword. The site has also been affected by Panda (April & again recently) but, as Elia's response suggests, G is probably adjusting the EMD values.
-
Hi Bobby,
Have you looked at this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data
You could be experiencing the affect of the Exact Match Domain algorithm update.
Elias
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 speed - what do you aim for?
Hi Mozzers - was just looking at website speed and know the google guidelines on average page load time but I'm not sure whether Google issues guidelines on any of the other 4? Do you know of any guidance on domain lookup, server response, server connection or page download? Page Load Time (sec) - I tend to aim for 2 seconds max: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/your-website-design-should-load-in-4-seconds/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
Server Response Time: [Google recommends 200ms]: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/Server Redirection Time (sec) [dependent on number of redirects so probably no guide figure]
Domain Lookup Time (sec)
Server Connection Time (sec)
Page Download Time (sec) Thanks, Luke0 -
My page ranking dropped after I made it responsive
Recently, I made one of my site page responsive. It was ranking on 13th Position and after I made the page responsive, it dropped to 24 desktop and 35 on mobile rankings. I ran mobile friendly test and it said "awesome, your page is mobile friendly". Not sure, what went wrong here. Page in question is: https://www.itcontractorsuk.com/ Can someone please advice? Please Note: My site is partially responsive.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThinkWebUK0 -
Pages Disappearing from Search
Hi, We have had a strongly ranking site since 2004. Over the past couple of days, our Google traffic has dropped by around 20% and some of our strong pages are completely disappearing from the rankings. They are still indexed, but having ranked number 1 are nowhere to be found. A number of pages still remain intact, but it seems they are increasingly disappearing. Where should we start to try and find out what is happening? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
DAs dropped for many pages?
I recently noticed that the domain authorities dropped by 5 or 6 points for us and for our competitors. And for many other pages that I check regularly. Was the algorithm changed or is it just me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Duplicate content within sections of a page but not full page duplicate content
Hi, I am working on a website redesign and the client offers several services and within those services some elements of the services crossover with one another. For example, they offer a service called Modelling and when you click onto that page several elements that build up that service are featured, so in this case 'mentoring'. Now mentoring is common to other services therefore will feature on other service pages. The page will feature a mixture of unique content to that service and small sections of duplicate content and I'm not sure how to treat this. One thing we have come up with is take the user through to a unique page to host all the content however some features do not warrant a page being created for this. Another idea is to have the feature pop up with inline content. Any thoughts/experience on this would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Enormous 7 page drop after switching servers and adding load balancers. Thoughts?
Hello Everyone, I'm a longtime Moz user but I had to switch accounts after switching jobs. I was hoping someone might be able to give me some insight on whats going on if possible. Our startup had first page position for our most valuable keyword: "Crowdfunding real estate" for about 6 or 7 months. Once we launched and switched to a production server behind load balancers, we dropped almost overnight to 7th page and we've been there for about a month. We don't have many links yet and some of the ones we DO have are kind of spammy (no idea where they came from and in process of trying to get them removed) but we thought it'd be strange to see that massive drop. We are even pages below a competitor who has NO links and basically zero content on the page. We don't have any notifications in WMT about a manual penalty or anything. I'd really, really appreciate any advice and If anyone has any ideas, the page is at: PatchofLand.com Thanks, Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatchofLand0 -
Tips for improving this page
I have made a content placeholder for a keyword that will gain significant search volume in the future. Until then I am trying to optimize the page to rank when the game launches and the keyword gains volume. http://hiddentriforce.com/a-link-between-worlds/walkthrough/ Is there anything I can do to improve the optimization for the phrase 'a link between worlds walkthrough' A lot of my competitors are already setting up similar placeholder pages and doing the same thing. I have 2 fairly large gaming sites that will place a banner for my walkthrough on their site. I did not pay for the links. I do free writing/ other services in exchange for this. I have been sharing the link socially. It has almost 200 likes and a handful of shares, tweets, g+ votes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0