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
-
Any disadvantages of employing additional images which open in new window? Will it impact bounce rate and rankings?
Hi all, Our website is all about our software product. Generally our website pages are filled with 3 to 6 screenshots of our product features. As Google recently shifting to mobile index and pageload speed is going to be priority, we decided to compress the images on our pages and show the same images of large size in new window when someone clicks on a image. I wonder if this helps or has any disadvantages? Users may click on these clickable images while browsing the pages and may shift to new window to view the image. Will this have any negative impact on bounce rate? Please share your thoughts. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
A company claiming to have a proprietary software that replicates Google algorithm?
Hi all, Unfortunately, getting into a bit of a p*ssing match 😞 with a company trying to compete for the business of one of our clients and just wanted to some feedback from the community here. The company competing for the client's business claims to have spent $1 million to replicate Google's algorithm so they create a replica site (not sure I understand this) of the client site, then test and optimize on-page SEO changes in their software to determine whether the on-page changes are ideal. Sounds fishy to me. Thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | RickyShockley0 -
All keywords increasing rank except URL Keyword, whats going on?
Hello, Our website is a private equity firm database, privateequityfirms.com. We rank well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms but unfortunately we have been losing ranking in our main keyword and url "private equity firms" .We have ranked as high as 3rd under wikipedia. The only real changes we have made are too the sitemap that is auto generated every time some thing is changed in the database. Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? I have included a Image to help show the problem. Thank you! MozAnalyticsPDF115_zpsddec64fa.png
Algorithm Updates | | Nicktaylor10 -
Best approach to ranking locally
Hello, What are the best approaches to ranking locally. Ie a user in Dallas googles "mechanics" and local results return. I understand Google+ local pages to be an important factor for the location based listings on maps. What about about location specific pages on the site? Meaning if we have a page on the site talking about areas we serve in Dallas. Other suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | CallRingTalk0 -
How to fix Yahoo/Bing Ranking with hurting great Google ranking
If you have a Top ranking for keyword in Google but for Bing and Yahoo you rank considerably lower how do you balance the desire to rank better in Yahoo/Bing with not wanting to damage your Google ranking? Have people found certain on page SEO tactics help one but damage the other? Does anyone else have great Google rankngs for keywords but Bing/Yahoo are mediocre to poor?
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseninja0 -
Infographic rankings has nose dived? Anyone else experienced this recently?
I posted an infographic back in April, 2012 on my company blog.
Algorithm Updates | | adamlcasey
I added embed code at the bottom, so people could embed on their websites (not many did that I can tell) I also submitted it to a number of Infographic directories and got links back from around 5-6 of them. The title of the Infographic is exact match long tail search term.(6 words) By July it had hit Position 6 in Google.co.uk, where it stayed in the top 10 until December fluctuating between positions 6-9. I haven't done anything else to the post and yet since December it has started to trickle down the rankings, in the past 3 weeks it dropped from 15th on Feb 3rd to 93rd on Feb 17th, then bounced back up to 33rd on the 25th of Feb and has now fallen again to 89th yesterday. Is this normal or have I been hit with a penalty of some sort? Not sure if this matters but I have the word infographic at the end of my title?? Also when I run it through OSE I don't see some of the backlinks that I can see from GWT.0 -
Index Page lost rankings? Please Help!
This morning I ranked highly (Page 1 UK Google) for over 50 keyword search terms for my website http://www.careworx.co.uk This afternoon my rankings have bottomed out and dropped pages? I have not been de-indexed it appears and many of my sub-pages are still highly ranked. Would anybody know what has happened? I know of Google Panda but I would've seen results drop before now so I'm very concerned. Don't seem to have lost any links etc and am careful to balance SEO with a mix of techniques to keep Google happy and again, have not been de-indexed. Can anybody offer advice please, or let me know how I can rectify this.
Algorithm Updates | | andystep0 -
High bounce rates from content articles influencing our rankings for rest of site
We have a large content article section on our e-commerce site that receives a lot of visits but also have very high bounce rates. We are wondering if this is hurting the rest of our site's rankings. **When I say bounce rates I mean what ever metrics Google is using to determine quality content (specifically after the Panda update). ** We are trying to determine if having the content articles on our domain hurts us. We only have the content articles for link building.
Algorithm Updates | | seozachz0