Webiste Ranking Differently Based on IP/Data Center
-
I have a site which I thought was ranking well, however that doesn't seem to be the case.
When I check the site from different IPs within the US it shows that the site is on page 1 and on other IPs it shows that it's on page 5 and for some keywords it shows it's not listed.
This site was ranking well, before but I think google dropped it when I was giving putting in too much work with it (articles and press releases), but now it seems to have recovered when I check with my IP, but on other data centers it still shows it prior to recovering.
It was able to recover after not building links to for a period of time, it showed it moved back up from the data center I'm connected to, but it still shows the possibly penalized results on other data centers.
Is it possible that site is still penalized?
So the question is why does it show it recovered in some data centers and not others?
How do I fix this?
It's been about 2 months since it's recovered from some data centers. Is this site still penalized or what's going on?
There are no warnings in web master tools.
Any insights would be appreciated!
This isn't an issue with the rank tracking software, I've tested this on a multitude of IPs with varying differences.
Thanks!
-
Linkdex and also authority labs now offer you the opportunity to see different georankings.
Said that, none seems having answered about why a site ranks differently in every location.
The answer is quite simple: personalization and geotargeting of the users. That means that Google tends to present to the users sites that it considers will be more useful also from a geographical perspective.
This is blatantly evident in case of hotel or local businesses, but it is applied also to site which, at first, may seem not having a real dependency over geotargeting. Why? Let's take SEO companies. If you are doing a search for "SEO Services" a neutral search will show you this, but if I do a not neutral search, Google start showing to me, who I live in Spain, SEO sites from the UK, which are maybe more interesting for me as they are closer to me geographically and about in the same timezone.
-
Hi A A,
I generally use GeoRanker.com to get this information. It's got a fairly generous full-featured free version, and lets you target countries and cities and compare the first page results. It's quite useful for comparing differing results between cities.
If you're looking for multiple keyword tracking in the top 100, your best best is to use something like Rank Tracker or AWR and use proxies located in the same country as the ccTLD you're searching (i.e. use UK proxies for google.co.uk). You can automate this to an extent in Rank Tracker (in Preferences > Proxy Rotation).
Hope that helps!
-
most of my clients are in different cities, but I've never seen the rankings vary as much as this.
Just wondering if there was an answer to this or if I should suggest to start over again, with the client if the site is penalized, he won't be happy with this for sure.
Also wondering if there was a way to see if the site is penalized, but it makes no sense for it to be penalized in some data centers but not others.
Also it's very frustrating dealing with clients all the time as well, so you may have the ideal position working inhouse
-
Thanks AA
Yes, this explains a lot. I am an in house SEO in the USA. I don't have a need (yet) for this kind of thing. Quite frankly, if I got to the point where I really needed this, I might consider handing off the client to someone in a more relevant local or out-sourcing to someone in their local.
I think the ability to be able to check via tools like HMA has a limited horizon and that one can't build a business that relies on the ability to check rankings in this manner. Just my two cents, and I'm certainly not saying I am an authority on this particular subject.
the topic has been fascinating to me!
-
Hi Dana and JDP,
I use hide my ass (aff link removed by staff) has pretty good service checking from different locations.
I needed this because I have clients in different location so I needed to find proxies within their location, and found out that the results they see are drastically different from my own and also from different IP addresses in this situation. I have others where the results vary but not by the same margin.
Any help or ideas of what I should do would be appreciated. Thank you!
-
Hello A A,
Your post got me paranoid and I went around to all the different online tools that will check rankings from different data centers like http://dccheck.com/ . I got a wide variety of responses from these tools and it made me wonder if they worked at all. I also don't have any hard answers for you and it sounds like you may have had some trouble in the past;however it is possible you are freaking out about nothing. Is your traffic stable? You could check google analytics and filter for search traffic then your keywords. From there go and check the geographic map the traffic is coming from. Compare a current time period this way to a past time period when you know you were ranking well. It it is not too different, maybe there is nothing to worry about. Does that help?
-
Hi A A, I'm sorry I am not posting with a really good answer to your question, but instead I have questions. How are you checking your rankings from multiple data centers? I have been doing SEO professionally for a long time (8 years), but there's certainly a lot I don't know.
How does one check one's rankings from a multitude of data centers? Is this really necessary in the US?
I understand that different regions might show different results even to Google users who aren't logged in to Google, based on their geographic location. But, I haven't ever heard of drastic changes in rankings from one data center to another unless it was for a location-specific Website.
Sorry to answer your question with a question, but I am just really curious about this. Thanks!
Dana
P.S. I am currently using SEOMoz Pro, WebPosition.com, Rank Tracker (sporadically) and AWR....but am not aware that you can set any of these up to search from different data centers?
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
-
Will pillar posts create a duplication content issue, if we un-gate ebook/guides and use exact copy from blogs?
Hi there! With the rise of pillar posts, I have a question on the duplicate content issue it may present. If we are un-gating ebook/guides and using (at times) exact copy from our blog posts, will this harm our SEO efforts? This would go against the goal of our post and is mission-critical to understand before we implement pillar posts for our clients.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Olivia9540 -
Our webpage has been embedded in others website using iframe. Does this hurts us in rankings?
Hi all, One of our partners have embedded our webpage in their website using iframe such a way that anybody can browse to any page of our website from their website. It's said that content in iframes will not get indexed. But when I Google for h1 tag of our embedded webpage, I can see their website in SERP but not ours which is original. How it's been indexed? Is this hurting us in rankings? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Still seeing a terrible rank drop after last algo update?!
I'm still stumped as to why the ranking has gone so poor on a whitehat site. (see attached image) As you can see we've steadily been improving the ranking over the last 6+ months and then got hit with a massive change this month... I can't physically see any issues and Moz isn't reporting anything negatively that would have such a major effect.. Like not as if the drops were subtle... they've all gone into the 50+ section! Any insights into what may have changed in the latest algo update would be appreciated?! S0sD7d8.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | snowflake740 -
Competitor link profile shocking - yet still out ranking!
Howdy fellow Mozzer's,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TimHolmes
I have been doing some background seo checking on a competitor in my small "insurance niche" to try and see why they have recently shot up the listings and are now consistently out ranking us.
We have quality content on our site and have always taken an approach of trying to be whiter than white when it comes to developing out SEO plans. The site in question has recently moved ahead of us (along with some aggregators e.g. confused.com) possibly due to shifting patterns from possible algorithm changes favouring brand or could it be a case that Google has dropped a ball when it comes to checking back links as the competitors site is 99% linked to link farms, link submission sites, directories and lots of other spammy/poor quality sites. We do not feel they are doing anything from a content stand to justify their sudden propulsion up the ranks. I am reluctant to pursue dodgy tactics to help get out site back in position as I feel it could then contribute and hurt us down the line. Does anyone know how I can combat against their poor QUANTITY over QUALITY banklink profile that is surely helping them at the minute? At a bit of a loss so any help would be greatly appreciated. aRTu4cT0 -
What EMD Meta Title should we use and what about getting links to the same C-Block IP?
Situation: Recently I encountered two problems with both internal and external SEO for my company websites.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TT_Vakantiehuizen
This Dutch company has four websites on one server. Three closely related EMD(Exact Match Domain) websites and one overarching website. (Holiday homes rental websites) Vakantiehuizen-Verhuur.nl (overarching)
Vakantiehuizen-Frankrijk.nl (EMD)
Vakantiehuizen-Italie.nl (EMD)
Vakantiehuizen-Spanje.nl (EMD) Question 1:
What would be a preferable Meta Title for the EMD websites (homepage/subpages)? Keep in mind that the domains are EMD. The homepage will target the most important keywords and should not compete with subpages. Options for the homepage:
1. Vakantiehuizen Frankrijk | Alle vakantiehuizen in Frankrijk op een rij!
2. Vakantiehuizen Frankrijk | Vakantiehuizen-Frankrijk.nl onderdeel van Vakantiehuizen-Verhuur.nl
3. Suggestions? Options for the subpages:
1. Vakantiehuis Normandie | Vakantiehuizen Frankrijk
2. Vakantiehuis Normandie | Vakantiehuizen-Frankrijk.nl
3. Suggestions? And concerning the keywords in the beginning; is it wise to use both plural and singular terms in the meta title? For Example:
Hotel New York. Best hotels in New York | Company Name Question 2: Many SEOs state that getting (too many) links from the same C-Block IP is bad practice and should be avoided. Is this also applicable if one website links out to different websites with the same C-Block IP? Thus, website A, B and C (on the same server) link to website D (different server) could be seen as spam but is this the same when website D links to website A, B and C?0 -
Will implementing 301's on an existing domain impact massively on rankings?
Hi Guys,I have a new SEO client who only has the non-www domain setup for GWT and I am wondering if implementing a 301 for www will have a massive negative impact on rankings. I know a percentage of link juice and PageRank will be affected. So my question is: If I implement the 301 should I brace myself for a fall in rankings. Should I use a 301 instead to maintain link juice and PageRank? Is it good practice to forward to www? Or could I leave the non www in place and have the www redirect to it to maintain the data? Dave
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icanseeu0 -
Possibilities of Negative Co-Citation and/or Co-Occurrence?
Knowing how co-citation and co-occurrence function, or how we speculate that they function, it seems there could be several ways that competitors could associate negative words and phrases with sites they compete with. This could also be disastrous for reputation management. Someone could associate negative terms about a person or business without linking to them and it could do harm. Does this make sense? Is this possible or are there safe-checks in place?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
My website disapeared from google rankings, please help?
Our website url is http://www.phoria.com Around January 16th we disappeared from google for the keyword 'kratom' We were on page 3 for the longest time. We have no critical messages in webmaster tools however I did notice most of our links seem to be website directory links.We still rank for a couple terms like buy kratom on page 6.I think a google update occurred around this time so I've read however if we had a variety of links that went against google guidelines wouldn't we have received a message stating so in Webmaster Tools?This month has been very confusing to say the least. Any help would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gregdotcom0