Image ranking plummet help
-
Hi Moz Community,
I need help understanding why my site is dropping rankings and traffic significantly. We were hit the hardest with doing a image query filter ~6/2-6/3 (image attached).
We also had a site migration on this exact date, but didn't change URL structure or domain names, just switched hosting sites. I'm assuming this plummet is from the migration, but can't figure out why. I may also not be understanding this filter clearly so let me know.
Shoot any questions my way that could help your understanding of the problem be more clear.
Thanks,
-Reed -
Haha yeah I tend to get OCD on a lot of things. Awesome, thanks for taking the time to get back to me on this. I have learned to love the Moz community these days.
And that's a good answer, that's what I was hoping, but I guess anytime I see a traffic dip I immediately panic rather than take into mind what you just said.
Thanks again,
-Reed
-
Nice work moving over to the "hyphen" as opposed to the "underscore", being that the big G doesn't recognize underscores as a space.
I also agree with cleaning up the URL's to not have the .jsp extension. That could just be my OCD kicking in lol
If you are able to create a script to do all that heavy lifting, certainly the best approach.
To answer your question: IMO I would think the combination of all the changes the site went through has cause Google's algo to be in shock when it crawls your site. Give it time, continue cleaning it up and I think you will recover just fine. If anything, I think you will be better than you were before the move as a result of your house cleaning.
-
Hey Ryan, I actually have another question if you wouldn't mind helping out.
Before our migration, our old team was creating all URLS with underscores as separators and ending in .jsp. I changed this to not have .jsp and to only use "-" as word separators in URLs.
However, we have a lot of backlinks with content linking to those .jsp URLs (and our old blog posts all link to those pages), which are 404 product pages. (I can redirect, but there are thousands of them). I could probably develop a script to automatically rewrite too.
My question: could this be a contributing factor to our organic downfall too?
-
The struggle is REAL ha haa I feel your pain brother. Get some good quality blog articles out and share them on your social platforms. That may help push the new data and get it circulating.Wishing all the best!
-
Thanks for helping out Bryan and Donford, it's been about a month and a half since migration so I'll definitely wait it out another month, implement some good marketing/content and see what it looks like after that.
Ahh, the waiting game of organic traffic.
-
Yeah, if a new IP was assigned to the site that is more than likely the cause of the dip. It should recover though, just needs time to propagate. Certainly wish you all the best with this! Keep us posted
-
Hi ICEReed,
If you received a new IP, than I am fairly certain that is the issue. DNS has to propagate across the net before traffic returns to normal. I have had a few experiences with this, and have seen it take up to 3 months before traffic was returned to normal.
-
Thanks for responding Bryan,
I have referenced the tips in the website migration guide, but it's never a bad move to go over them one more time.
A new ip address was assigned to the site when we migrated.
I initially had a lot of indexing issues that are now fixed, but were a problem at the start of the migration. For instance, our sitemap.xml just vanished as did our robots.txt file. They are back up and running, but the dev team didn't migrate them over.
-
Hey Reed!
We experienced a similar dip for a site when migrating to a new server back in September 2013. Did you reference the tips listed in the post from Moz? Website Migration Guide
Its unfortunate that you made a few tweaks at the same time, which makes this more difficult to pin down.
When you migrated, did you carry over the original ip address or was a new one assigned to the site?
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
-
Losing keyword rankings and sessions.
I had removed /en from end of each page ( www.mydomain.com/en become www.mydomain.com) Could it be the reason of losing keyword rankings and sessions?
Reporting & Analytics | | Jason2250 -
New GSC Search Analytics report: position mixes web and image
Dear all, I am auditing a site in Google Seach Console (GSC, formerly Google Webmaster Tools) and find the Position data in the new Search Analytics report very, very improbable. I suspect that even if you filter by "SearchType = web", the Position data does count the ranking of images in the Image search widget as a search position. Has anybody observed this as well? Here is the case: the site targets a quite broad search query in the bath room domain. I have made a number of searches with private browser sessions, different browsers, alternative IP address via a VPN, etc, and the look of the search result in the relevant geographical market is consistently the following. Three Adwords ads #1 organic result Images universal results widget #2-10 organic results The site’s first page ranks consistently around #15 of the organic results, hence on the second SERP. But it also consistently has an image in the Images universal results widget (usually #2 or #3). This is consistent with the data I have in Moz Analytics. Yet, the GSC Search Analytics report shows 2.2 as average position with the default SearchType=Web setting. I have done the search over and over, and never has a PAGE of the site ranked that high. Is there any public information how exactly the position is calculated? I mean, something more precise than the very general information on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6155685?hl=en Is there any way to get the correct position/ranking? Thanks for sharing your experience!
Reporting & Analytics | | QRN0 -
Keyword ranking with competitors with lower #s
When analyzing a keyword ranking, our term is consistently on P1 P3-5. Looking more closely, I find that the numbers don't make sense to me. Our competitors have lower Page Authority 3s, lower # Root Domains Linking to Page, Lower Domain Authority 3#s and lower Root Domains linking to the Root Domains Linking to the Root Domain #s. What explains the consistent_ ranking discrepancy? Any ideas?_
Reporting & Analytics | | Chermak1 -
Keyword Rank Dip - Estimated Wait Time to Return to Higher Spot?
The organic traffic to our site (fairly new) took a ~50% hit about a month ago due to the drop in our most important keyword. The numbers have come back up and are now exceeding the number before the dip. While this is all fine and dandy, we're still not ranking in the top 50 for our most valuable keyword. We've put out a number of guest post on reputable outside sites and are building a regular cadence of those posts, but my question is, what is the realistic wait time for those organic rankings to increase again?
Reporting & Analytics | | smf434340 -
Multiple-Domain tracking for sister sites- NO retail checkout- Please help
Hello, I have about 5 sites I want to set up multiple-domain tracking in google analytics. All posts I read seem to be focused on cross-domain tracking for the purpose of tracking a visitor from one domain across another domain for shopping cart check outs. I don't need that. I have about 3 sister sites (mastersite.com, sistersite1.com, sistersite2.com, sistersite3.com) related to my primary site. I want 1 Master Analytics Profile to track traffic for all of these sites combined. My visitors will not jump from mastersite.com over to sistersite1.com. There will be no cross-domain visits. How can I set up 1 master google analytics profile that will aggregate traffic data from all sites and present the data to me in one analytics profile. Please help
Reporting & Analytics | | AndreGant0 -
X2 Google Analytics affect page rank ?
Hi there, If you had 2 Google Analytics Accounts one to the main site and another to the blog, could this affect the page position in Google? We've suddenly noticed a drop in our KWs and it was shortly after we added another Google Analytics Account. The blog has 68% Bounce rate and the main site has always been about 48%. Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | webdesigncwd0 -
How to Turn Google Analytics Into Your Own Rank Tracker Using Custom Variables
I followed the instructions here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables, but cannot see the report in Analytics under "Custom Variables". As I dont know JS syntax, I assume the code is wrong. I just added dohertyjf's code under my normal tracking code. Can someone tell me if and where the error is? | | Much obliged!
Reporting & Analytics | | zeepartner0 -
Google +1 and ranking effect .
Anyone have any experience as to what effect google +1 has on ranking? Trying to figure out what impact it might have. Ecommerce site in norway selling childrens clothing. Atm we are ranking 25th for main targetted word childrens clothing (barneklær in norwegian). on google.no this has a difficulty of 34. None of main competitors have any amount of google +1's on their site. Lets say if I in some way could manage to get 100 ppl to push +1 button. Would this affect our ranking at all ? Might be impossible to answer but if anyone has thoughts about it I am interested. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | danlae0