Drop of 11 places - server issues?
-
Hi all,
I have experienced a drop of 11 places for our main keyword since our last Moz rankings report which means page 2 to page 3.
I have also received an error 904 in my weekly crawl report two weeks in a row and think this may be the reason for the drop. Could this result in a drop of 11 places?
Last week I also tweeked the H1 tags on my main landing pages, nothing major just a reordering of the words. Could this result in such a major drop?
Final question is does anyone know of any major algorithm update last week that could have affected rankings so drastically?
Thanks all
Gavin -
I experienced a similar issue recently with a client. A few 904 errors seemed to coincide with a notice in the client's 3d cart CMS that they were short on bandwidth. We also saw a VERY significant drop in rankings across the board. We upgraded the hosting plan and the 904 errors went away temporarily, and a very modest improvement in rankings followed, but not a return to normal. It's now about 2-3 months after we first saw the 904 errors and I've just noticed another one that has come up.
-
A 904 error is a timeout. As such this could be on either end of the crawl or in the middle. If you have You should have remote monitoring to measure server uptime and performance. Check the time of the 904 errors with your monitoring. Also review server logs for that period for other errors.
In some cases we have seen security systems block crawlers - especially at larger companies where web app firewalls are in use. The result can be that the system thinks there's an attack and could tarpit the crawler.
This is just speculation but something to easily rule out by looking at your server's logs and monitoring for the period in question.
-
Hi bjs2010
If it was just the 904 error alone I wouldn't be too interested. However it came at the same time as a rankings drop. This also was the second week in a row that I had received the Crawl error 904.
Would be good to know if others got the crawl error notification though? Is there any way to know when SEO.Moz do their crawl as it could be when our server is running some back ups.
Thanks
Gavin -
We got that 904 error also in last weeks crawl. Never ever had it before and we have great hosting. I´m not sure if this could be a Moz issue as opposed to a server issue. Any others experience a 904?
-
If only! We host the website internally and the IT dept who look after the server say there are no issues with the server or network configuration.
The 904 error is on both our sites which are both located on the same server.
The best solution would be to outsource the hosting.
Cheers
Gavin -
Would it be possible for you to change hosts?
-
Thanks Martijn
The drop in rankings is quite significant and comes at the same time as the crawl errors in my reports.
I have 2 websites on the same server and both weekly reports show '904 Response from Server Timed out Without Completing Page Request' and both sites have shown a drop in rankings.
Thanks for your response.
Gavin
-
Hi Gavin,
Most of the updates from the last time that were noteworthy weren't launched last week. Server issues could be an issue that have let your page drop like this, Google could see that your site wasn't stable and have 'decided' that they will put you down for a while to make sure that visitors won't have any issues with your 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
-
Traffic drop on this site
I am SEO'ing this site but need some assistance in the analysis. it was doing not too bad but in the last 4 months the google traffic has really fallen off, i suspect the keywords may need improving but any tips or observations would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crowng0 -
Drop in SERPS and little movement after redesign
I took over a project in mid-March 2015. Rankings went from 5th page to roughly #11 - #13 (but never into first page). Launched a redesign on August 15, 2015. Rankings dropped from #11 - #13 down to #20. Weird part: On 3 different Mondays since Mid-August, I have noticed that the rankings shoot back up to about #11 in the morning, then drop back down to #20 by the evening. Three questions: 1. Has anyone seen a drop like this after redesign? (Assuming you kept the same content, just different layout). 2. Did it seem like the redesign resulted in some sort sandbox effect, where the rankings wouldn't move for a period of time? 3. Any advice on how to get it moving again? Or is this just a function of time? Ps. The interior pages are moving well. domain: getinjuryanswers.com KW: San Diego Personal Injury Lawyer, Personal Injury Lawyer San Diego I understand these are hyper-competitive terms. What puzzles me is how calcified the rankings appear to be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
A new website issue
Hello everybody,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtmaster
I have started a new website 22 days ago at the beginning of this month and i have long articles. I think this should make the site appear in search results for long tail keywords even if they are not very relevant but as you can see in the attached image from my webmaster tools the impression count has suddenly increased to 100 then significantly decreased again. Even when i cancel "filter" option. Is this normal for a 3 weeks old website? or there is something i have to check? thanks. cLMa04l.jpg0 -
Dropped ranking - Penguin penalty or duplicate content issue?
Just this weekend a page that had been ranking well for a competitive term fell completely out of the rankings. There are two possible causes and I'm trying to figure out which it is, so I can take action. I found out that I had accidentally put a canonical on another page that was for the same page as the one that dropped out of the rankings. If there are two pages with the same canonical tag with different content, will google drop both of them from the index? The other possibility is that this is a result of the recent Penguin update. The page that dropped has a high amount of exact anchor text. As far as I can tell, there were no other pages with any penalties from the Penguin update. One last question: The page completely dropped from the search index. If this were a Penguin issue, would it have dropped out completely,or just been penalized with a drop in position? If this is a result of the conflicting canonical tags, should I just wait for it to reindex, or should I request a reconsideration of the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gametv0 -
Technical SEO issue
Hi Everyone, I have encountered a major issue in one of my clients website(kitchen appliance website). This client has 2 main websites (A & B) linked with each other representing 2 different categories of appliances. We are trying to create some brand pages that this store carries. One brand page has been created and when searching for it on SERP, the results found should be under URL A but it is under URL B. I don't know what is going on? Can someone explain me what happened? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
My Job Site is having Indexing Issues
I have 2 job sites that I am managing and working on. One of the sites has a great deal of job vacancies and expired job pages that have been indexed. This one below: http:// job search.cctc .com/cctc Jobsearch/expandedjobsearch.do This job site does not have any job pages index: http://www.cross countryallied. com/ctAlliedWebSite/ travel-nurse-jobs/job-search.jsp Why and what can I do to get the dynamic pages index and ranking? Any help tips would be much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
Pagination and links per page issue.
Hi all, I have a listings based website that just doesn't seem to want to pass rank to the inner pages. See here for an example: http://www.business4sale.co.uk/Buy/Hotels-For-Sale-in-the-UK I know that there are far too many links on this page and I am working on reducing the number by altering my grid classes to output fewer links. The page also displays a number of links to other page numbers for these results. My script adds the string " - Page2" to the end of the title, description and URL when the user clicks on page two of these results. My question is: Would an excessive amount(200+) of links on a page result in less PR being passed to this page(looking spammy)? And would using rel canonical on page numbers greater than 1 result in better trust/ranking? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0 -
Page URL Issue
Hey Friend, I am having sort of a problem. I currently have a subpage with the url of: /musclecars/ I also have a subpage at /muscle-cars/muscle-car-restoration.html Obviously my main url is not listed here. My problem is I am trying to rank for the term Muscle Cars but the first URL does not have the keywords seperated so I rank no where. If I type MuscleCars into google I rank though (but nobody types the keyword in like that). So my question is can I create muscle-cars.mydomainname.com and rank well with that? Or is it better to just use mydomainname.com/muscle-cars/ even though that second term I am ranking for already has that in its url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shandaman0