Can setting up a Domain Forward lead to sudden drop in Rankings?
-
Hi there,
Our website www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk has been ranking on pages 1 and 2 of Google for the past 12 - 18 months for a number of our key search terms. There has been the odd fluctuation but nothing major.
On Wednesday of this week (2 days ago), we purchased the domain www.porcelainsuperstore.com and without thinking I enabled Domain Forwarding on this domain to go to www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk
Today our rankings have shown quite dramatic drops, e.g- Wood effect tiles position 1 to position 3
- Metro tiles position 9 to position 12
- Quartz tiles position 4 to position 9
- Floor tiles position 14 to position 25
Can anyone advise on this? Do you think the domain forward could have created this sudden drop?
I have now disabled the domain forwarding but am worried that this might be irreversible in Googles eyes?I have now disabled the domain forward - I assume this is the right thing to do?
Any help much appreciated.Thanks
Ben
-
Hi there.
Well, 3 spots drop in rankings is surely not "quite dramatic drop". It can happen for many-many reasons. What I would recommend though is to check if the domain name you have purchased ever had (or still has) penalty or spam issues. Usually, if everything is clean, it wouldn't affect your rankings.
As for irreversibility - nothing is irreversable. However, if that domain was in fact the reason of ranking drop due to spam issues, then it might take longer to recover.
Yes, disabling would be the first thing to try if you think that was the reason. See how your rankings react, if there are any sudden changes. However, I do recommend to check other factors like your backlink profile changes, content cnahges, your competition SEO changes and so on.
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
-
Do the sub domain backlinks count for main domain and increase authority?
Hi all, I just wonder if the back links for different sub domains will be counted and considered to rank the main domain better or they are just limit to sub domain pages? There are many websites which has got multiple sub domains which receive backlinks? So the backlinks to main domain and sub domain weigh same at Google? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Dates appear before home page description in the SERPs- HUGE drop in rankings
We have been on the first page of Google for a number of years for search terms including 'SEO Agency', 'SEO Agency London' etc. A few months ago we made some changes to the design of the home page (added a blog feed), and made changes to the website sitemap. Two days ago (two months after last site changes were made) we dropped subsantially in the SERPs for all home page keywords. Where we are found, a date appears before the description in the SERPs, dating February 2012 (which is when we launched the original website). The site has been through a revamp since then, yet it still shows 2012. This has been followed by a few additional strange things, including the sitelinks that Google is choosing to show (which including author bio pages showing in homepage site links), and googling our brand name no longer brings up sitelinks in the SERPs. The problem only affects the home page. All other pages are performing as standard. When Penguin 4.0 came out we saw a noted improvement in our SERP performance, and our backlinks are good and quality, largely from PR efforts. Of course, I would be interested in additional pairs of eyes on the back links to see if anyone thinks that I have missed anything! We have 3 of our senior SEOs working on trying to figure out what is going on and how to resolve it, but I would be very interested if anyone has any thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | GoUp3 -
Home page rank for keyword
Hi Mozers I have traded from my website balloon.co.uk for over 10 years. For a long while the site ranked first for the word 'balloon' across the UK on google.co.uk (first out of 41 million). Around the time Penguin launched the site began to drop and currently sits on about page 5. What's confusing is that for a search on 'balloons' ('s' on the end of balloon) it ranks 2nd in the location of Birmingham where I'm based. That's 2nd in the real search rather than a map local search. But - if I search 'balloon' from the location of Birmingham my contact page ranks 5th: http://www.balloon.co.uk/contact.htm but the home page ranks nowhere. So - it's gone from ranking 1st nationally to ranking nowhere with my contact page ranking above the home page (which is a generic word domain). Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | balloon.co.uk0 -
Recent Rank drop after Penguin 2.1?
Recently, a lot of pages from our website have moved from page one or ranking number one, to page ten or something. We got a manual penalty message from Google Team, we removed a lot of unnatural links pointing to our pages and disavowed the rest. This got the penalty removed and we got a message from Google confirming the same. Before the manual penalty we were getting about 140,000 visits per day, after the penalty about 80,000. However, after Hummingbird or Penguin 2.1 all our ranks have vanished. We are nowhere in Google for our primary keywords and we getting like 40,000 visits per day. Most are direct or from sources other than Google. We had another look at the links we disavowed, a list of about 11000 domains, we found about 3000 domains to be good. We fixed the disavow file about one week back, but no changes in traffic since. We checking the domains again to see if we have missed more good domains in there; yes, we have. There are still a very few good domains in there. But we are not touching the disavow list; waiting to see the change for the last submitted. We have a dedicated user base, good liking on Facebook, all the stats in Analytics speak good, about 40% repeat visits about 30% direct. About 3000 people search for the site using our brand name as reported in Analytics. I doubt the on-page optimization, the pages could be over-optimized. But the on-page factors for other pages ranking for the keywords are similar. The keyword density is similar, so are the usage of headings and stuff. We have not made any recent changes to these on-page patterns. Our team is not able to figure out what could have gone wrong.
Algorithm Updates | | Develop410 -
What are tips for ranking on Google Maps?
I have another thread going where everyone is saying to keep both the Places profile as well as the Google Plus Local profile I have for my company. I have another person telling me that it has a negative effect to have both accounts at the same time so I'm assuming thats why the listing never comes up on places unless you zoom all the way into the map to the address of the storefront. With that being said, can anyone provide some good tips for ranking first page on google maps? Goole Plus Local - https://plus.google.com/114370561649922317296/about?gl=us&hl=en Google Places - https://plus.google.com/103220086647895058915/about?gl=us&hl=en
Algorithm Updates | | jonnyholt1 -
Traffic drop :(
Hello MOzzers, hope you are all well. Here is my question. Site : http://www.gunshotdigital.com Issue: Traffic In the past 3 days we have close to 300 Unique visitors, but today we just have 5. Totally confused as to why this might be. I know Matt Cutts hinted at algo change in 2 months. Our rankings are still steady. So could anyone help? 🙂 Thank you Mozzers, we love you and are flattered to be part of this formidable community. Vijay
Algorithm Updates | | vijayvasu0 -
Is purchasing domain names still relevant?
Our MD is requesting that we continue to renew a long list of domains that we purchased many years ago. Is this practice still relevant or is there more to be gained from SEO and keyword strategy on our own site? All of the domains are redirected to our main site, but the main reason for purchasing was to stop others using them. Can someone please advise? Don't want to be spending money on this if it is of no benefit to us at all.
Algorithm Updates | | DonaldRussell0 -
Can someone explain a few hopefully simple questions for me please
Hi everyone First off for local seraches I rank very well pretty much all on first page and high up too. I am also attempting to rank well for the search term 'independent mortgage advice' I currently rank third on page 2 for the above search term. I am happy with this progress as the site is only 3 months old. I am UK based, have a .co.uk domain and although my site server is located in Germany (1and1) I have changed the geographical location in webmaster tools. My competitive domain analysis gives me the follwing results: Domain Authority: 14 Domain MozRank: 2.44 Total Links: 110 Ext. Followed Links: 19 Linking root Domains: 13 Followed Linking Root Domains:9 Linking C-Blocks: 8 Compared to my competitors around me these figures are terrible so why am I doing relatively well and how can I increase some of these figures such as Domain Authority & Domain Mozrank? The page I'm referring to is http://www.keystonemortgages.co.uk I am a novice so please don't mind calling me a numpty if it appears obvious to you Jason PS is it frowned upon to post links with title keywords here?
Algorithm Updates | | JasonHegarty0