Recent Algorithm Update Impact on Rankings
-
I've read that the most recent algorithm update by Google is targeting dodgy links. I have a client's website who within the last few days has been smashed out of of top positions for the most competitive keywords (and many others). I'm worried that the site has been penalised, however I can't understand why it would be.
The site only has 11 domains linking to it (65 links total) and a lot of these links are coming from the same websites that link to all of our other web clients and none of them have experienced this sudden and significant drop in rankings.
Does anyone know if Google is targeting a specific type of site, or how I can determine if my client's website has been penalised? I've not made any significant changes recently to the site's content or meta data, however rankings have remained steady for months now. It just seemed to happen overnight that they dropped off everything (eg. middle of page 2 to page 8 of search results for some of the better keywords)
Thank you in advance for any assistance!
-
Hey Juice, I had the same thing happen on a very well optimized site with great backlinks.
I found that I had 2046 links from m(dot)biz linking to me that did not show in any tools but did show in GWT inbound links. These were all do-follow with the title tag as the anchor text. and about a third of them popped up right before the algo change.
I have disavowed them, and waiting to see if I get the change in rankings back like before. I wanted to see if you have found a different issue or if you might have also been link spammed by a similar site.
Dogfish
-
Thanks, Moosa. I have investigated in Webmaster tools and I don't seem to have any notice from Google. I haven't done any black-hat SEO on this site however these ranking decreases are more than the average fluctuation...
-
Probably you are talking about Penguin update. Yes Google do target doggy links! The best way to check if you website has been penalize by search engine or not is by getting in to the Google Webmaster tool and see if you received any manual penalty email If yes, you know where you are standing if not then match the date of the update with the date when your traffic and rankings dropped significantly, if they match (which I think it does) then you probably are attacked by Google.
As far as the competitors are concerns who are not dropped for those keywords, there could be two reasons for it. They might have more quality links in this link profile or maybe they have seen a drop on other keywords they might be targeting.
What you should be doing?
If you are attached by Google what you should be doing is auditing your links, removing the bad links, update a disavow file and finally start building some highest quality links so that Google can see you are working hard and lift the penalty accordingly.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Dramatic drop in SEO rankings after recovering from hacking
A few months ago my client's website was hacked which created over 20,000+ spammy links on the site. I dealt with removing the malware and got google to remove the malware warning shortly within a week of the hacking. Then started the long process to do 301 redirects and disavowing links under Webmaster tools over these few months. The hacking only caused a slight drop in rankings at the time. Now just as of last week the site had a dramatic drop in rankings. When doing a keyword search I noticed the homepage doesn't even get listed on Google Maps and for Google Search instead the inner pages like the Contact Us page show up instead of the homepage. Does anyone have any insight to the sudden drop happening now and why the inner pages are ranking higher than the homepage now?
Algorithm Updates | | FPK0 -
What is the new / current google algorithm update targeting and how to adapt / fix SEO approach accordingly ?
Over the past c. 3 weeks our average Google SERP rankings for a site have been as follows : week 1 : average 3rd in SERP week 2 : average 1st in SERP week 3 : average 7th in SERP Reading on sites including Moz, SEO Roundtable and looking at Moz's mozcast tool it seems there is allot of change going on with Google's algorithm at the moment. Is there a general consensus as to what the new algorithm update is targeting so that we can adapt our site / marketing accordingly ? Or is it too early to adapt ? When Google rolls out an update like this is it common to see fluctuations as they try out things or if we are currently down in the rankings should we take action now. I know there a tools that look at your google analytics data an overlay a list of major google updates such a penguin and panda, but from what ive read this is a generic algorithm change rather than a defined named update.
Algorithm Updates | | jpeg800 -
Question: About Google's personalization of search results and its impact on monitoring ranking results
Given Google's personalization of search results for anyone who's logged into a Google property, how realistic and how actually meaningful/worthwhile is it to monitor one's ranking results for any keyword term these days?
Algorithm Updates | | RandallScrubs0 -
Google Latest Algorithmic Change about Https & Mobile Friendliness
How effective did it prove for anyone with the latest algorithmic change google search engine made for being mobile friendly and using https (valid ssl certificate). I see a good change being made under the ecommerce category for sites being used for online shopping. Let me know if anyone observes a major difference.
Algorithm Updates | | mozexpone0 -
Google Mobile Algorithm update
Hi there, On April the 21st Google seems to going to update their Mobile algorithm. I have a few questions about this one. Our current mobile website is very mobile friendly. We block all mobile pages with a noindex, so the desktop pages have been indexed on mobile devices. We use a redirect from desktop page to mobile page when someone hits a result on a mobile device. My gut tells me this is not April 21st-proof so I'm thinking about an update to make this whole thing adaptive. By making the thing adaptive, our mobile pages will be indexed instead of the desktop pages. Two questions: Will Google treat the mobile page as a 100% different page than the desktop page? Or will it match those two because everything will tell Google those belong together. In other words: will the mobile page start with a zero authority and will pages lose good organic positions because of authority or not? Which ranking factor will be stronger after April 21st for mobile pages: page authority or mobile friendliness? In other words: is it worth ignoring the 21 April update because the authority of the desktop pages is more important than making every page super mobile friendly? Hope to get some good advice! Marcel
Algorithm Updates | | MarcelMoz0 -
Sharp Drop in SERP Ranking for Specific Keyword
I'm sure this happens to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. My pages http://www.cleanedison.com/leed and http://www.cleanedison.com/courses/leed-green-associate suddenly dropped off the map over the past 2 weeks for the keyword "LEED Certification" I tried to limit the number of times "LEED" was mentioned on the first URL (/leed) to try to combat an over-optimization penalty but I did not for the second (/leed-green-associate). Both of them have fallen precipitously and are no where to be found on Google. What can I do to troubleshoot this? Is there anyway to guard against this in the future?
Algorithm Updates | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Anybody else noticing some serious dung ranking well for no reason lately?
I mean, like the complete opposite of what Panda is supposed to be doing... We've just had a discussion here and each went through a bunch of examples of sites that have sprung up and are ranking with the worst, spammiest backlink profiles ever, and poor content with little to zero on-page SEO. It's not accross the board by any means, and certainly there is no obvious pattern but there were a fair few examples we just looked at (I best not provide them for ethical reasons). It just "feels" like there's something going on...
Algorithm Updates | | SteveOllington0 -
High ranking for high volume keyword, but low traffic
We are ranked, according to Moz (and we've tested to back it up) #3 on Google UK for the keyword "Hire a Jet". According to Google, this keyword gets 22,500 local searches per month. Yet we get about 5 hits a month for that keyword. Any ideas why this is so low? It just doesn't add up or make sense whatsoever.
Algorithm Updates | | JetBookMike0