Sudden drop in PageRank to Unranked
-
Howdy,
A clients website has just dismorning (8/FEB/13) gone from index page PR:4 to Unranked including all inner pages on the domain.
There is no contact on GWT or penalty email from Google.
All organic rankings seem to be fine, and i read about the GWT backlink glitch earlier.
Should I expect the worst?
Thanks..
Mark
-
Hi Cyrus,
Thanks for your detailed reply, really appreciated.
Seems the site did get some what buggy with the new PR update. It was back to normal after 12 hours or so. No drop in rank or traffic over the weekend so it looks like we're in the clear.
The Google cached image of the homepage has resolved it's self also.
Thanks again for your help.
Mark
-
Hi Mark,
Toolbar PageRank is often not a very good indicator of how Google actually views your site. The important thing is your rankings and traffic, which you say is fine. This would indicate you are both in Google's index and are being served in search results. Yah!
Google did just update it's Toolbar PageRank, so this could be part of the issue, but I am concerned with how you described the page showing up in search results. (php error)
Here's what you can do to test:
1. In Google Webmaster Tools, use the "Fetch As Googlebot" tool to test if Google can access the homepage
2. Is your homepage in Google's cache? There are many ways to do this, here's one
3. Use the MozBar to crawl as GoogleBot. Set the user agent setting for "Googlebot" (I've attached a screenshot)
The reason for this is sometimes Viruses and Spam Attacks will take over your website and show one version to Google, but another version to users.
If all of these things check out, and you maintain your traffic, you should be fine!
-
Wouldn't we all my friend!
Serious client, lets see how the PR issue pans out over the weekend.
Thanks for the help.
-
Thanks for the reply Charles,
The site doesn't have protected WHOIS. Nor does it have 1,000s of backlinks. It would be a 15 year old domain registered on BOTW & DMOZ.So it's very strange!
Google would know the author on Google+ and so forth. It wouldn't be a spammy website. It's a viable business in the training / education industry with 10+ staff.
There is something a bit fishy about the homepage screenshot on the companies SERP.
It's showing a PHP error and a blank white page. But on clicking the result the website is fine. Could this be to do with the site's last indexing? Google have indexed a error homepage which has effected the rest of the site? Note this is the only SERP that has this error.
Thanks for the help!
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
-
Home page suddenly dropped from index!!
A client's home page, which has always done very well, has just dropped out of Google's index overnight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
Webmaster tools does not show any problem. The page doesn't even show up if we Google the company name. The Robot.txt contains: Default Flywheel robots file User-agent: * Disallow: /calendar/action:posterboard/
Disallow: /events/action~posterboard/ The only unusual thing I'm aware of is some A/B testing of the page done with 'Optimizely' - it redirects visitors to a test page, but it's not a 'real' redirect in that redirect checker tools still see the page as a 200. Also, other pages that are being tested this way are not having the same problem. Other recent activity over the last few weeks/months includes linking to the page from some of our blog posts using the page topic as anchor text. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Caro0 -
Positions dropping in SERPs after Title and Snippet change
Hi! I switched to a better title and meta description today for our page. Instead of ranking us better and displaying the new title - google let us fall from Position 10 to Position 16 (still dip laying the old title and meta description). Why is that? (I only changed it for the homepage) Cheers Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
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 -
Recent ranking drop followed by strange behavior in SERPS
Recently on the evening of August 5th almost all of the keywords our pages ranked highly for dropped by anywhere from 5 to 8 pages. The only activity during this time was an article that had been picked up by a major news outlet and then was apparently copied onto other sources with links to our domain and article. More puzzling though is rather than simply having the same page show up lower for a keyword, in a number of instances a different page is now shown for the result, often with less or no relevance to the keyword. In some cases, for a single keyword phrase we've seen as many as 10 different pages rotated throughout the day when performing a search. Prior to our rankings falling, we've never seen this behavior.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrianQuinn0 -
Should I nofollow the links in the drop-down nav menu?
Currently we have a big drop down navigation menu with a hell of a lot of links for this site: shoesinternational.co.uk SEOmoz is complaining that pretty much all pages have too many links, around the 160 link mark. Should I think about nofollowing all or certain links on the navigation
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creode0 -
What would cause a sudden rise and drop in keyword ranking?
I made one change to my site - creating a good, relevant, title. A few days later, ranking for a keyword jumped pretty well - which is what I was expecting. We were ranked 9th. Then the next ranking report showed a 20 place decline. What would cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Help! My Domain Authority keeps dropping! What do I do?
Hey! I just noticed my Domain Authority keeps dropping? What's happening? What do I do to get it better. I'm scared and dont know the next move to make to get this site better. Help please! Thanks! http://www.moondoggieinc.com Kristy O
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO1 -
Ranking & Traffic drops in last month
Over the last month, our rankings have been in a slow slide - that is until this week, when they absolutely crashed. Here are some example phrases: Phrase 11-Mar 5-Mar bug shields 24 9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShawnHerrick
floor mats 25 14
nerf bars 23 12
running boards 61 14
snow plows 25 18 For the life of me, I can't see what would have caused such drastic changes. Our site is almost completely unique content. Some things, like Warranty & Install instructions, are from the manufacturer to protect us from liabilities. We come up with our own feature text, and we have custom written articles, blog posts, research guides, etc. We also appear to be the only one of our competitors being affected in this fashion. Any thoughts would be helpful. Domain is realtruck.com.0