Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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?
-
I'm seeing this same issue on a client site I consult for. The pages have images added through the WYSIWYG as a workaround to add more info. We're using ASP.net which I realize is a legacy platform. I'm betting those dates are coming from the image creation date. Any updates on this issue appreciated.
- topic:timeago_earlier,8 months
-
Did anyone find a workaround for this? Just realized all my pages are also being affected by it. I really don't want to remove the videos, but looks like I don't have a choice.
- topic:timeago_earlier,6 months
-
If it is an algo update, it means Google is deliberately sinking articles with old datestamps, or conversely favouring articles with new/no datestamps.
Otherwise there's no way to explain why changing the embedded video to a link would instantly* restore rankings.
That does not seem like sensible behaviour. I agree with QDF for new content, but an old, regularly updated page with content that meets searchers' needs should never be penalised because of its publish date.
I'm leaning towards glitch on this one.
I hope I'm correct, because I don't want to serve a terrible user experience (linked videos instead of embeds) just to maintain our rankings.
- after a Fetch and Submit in Search Console
-
Unfortunately, they're being pretty tight-lipped on this one. Seems like a glitch, but they don't seem to think it's related to the rankings drop. Possible two events co-occurred, and there was an algo update at the same time as the glitch. Honestly, though, it's not clear at all.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Its great to know Google is aware of this. Upon deleting the YouTube videos of my pages, I am seeing them slowly change back to normal dates as well as no dates even showing at all.
Rankings are also slowly going back up. My theory is the old dates taken from the videos affected CTR (many searchers are probably turned off by a post from 2010), which after a few days of decreasing probably affected rankings as well.
-
We're definitely seeing similar reports about the bad dates, and it has been brought to Google's attention at reasonably high levels (i.e. I'm confident they know about it, but it's hard to say what they're doing about it).
Unfortunately, it's unclear whether this was connected to a ranking drop in some cases or was a coincidence. We did see substantial movement in the algorithm right around November 10th (the date you posted this question), but, unfortunately, we have no confirmation.
Sorry, wish I had better info right now, but I'll try to find out more.
-
Hi all,
Over here from my question about this exact problem (https://moz.com/community/q/serps-started-showing-the-incorrect-date-next-to-my-pages).
Can confirm that it is the YouTube embed date. We were going crazy as well trying to figure out where these random dates were coming from (some dated before our domain was even registered).
We've removed all YouTube videos for now (unfortunately) and are currently waiting for a recrawl as well as fetching some in the back-end of Search Console. Will report back once it's completely fixed.
-
Edward - thanks for posting this. Sitetechie - great detective work!
We are seeing the same issue:
- big drop in page 1 rankings
- old dates appearing in SERPs
- dates match exacty with YouTube vieos embedded on articles
I have changed our YouTube embeds (Wordpress site using oEmbed) to just plain links until Google resolves this issue.
If anyone else has any more information on this bug, please keep posting here.
-
Hi yes that does seem as though it is probably it. I have checked a few sites that appear to have the same issue, and they have videos on home page too. We will remove and check.
Very annoying as the substantial decline in rankings coincides direct with this, and it does appear to be a bug. Let's give Rand and the Moz comm the heads up on this. If he points it out you can bet that it will be noticed by the powers up top!
Thanks very much for your help!
Ed
-
We experienced something similar starting yesterday and after tons of digging, finally figured it out. Now, let's spread the word and get Google to fix this ASAP! Does anyone know how to get this bug in front of the right people at Google? Please help as it is causing issues with countless sites. See below for what is happening:
The issue that is causing this seems to be a Google bug. That Google bug is taking the original upload date of a YouTube video you have embedded on the page and then is placing that date in front of your meta description in SERPs for that page. We were going crazy trying to figure this out and eventually figured it out because it was only on our sites/pages with embedded YouTube videos and all of the dates inserted ahead of the description matched up perfectly with the original upload dates of the YouTube videos. I found this to be the case with your agency website date showing in the meta description matching up with the original upload date of the YouTube video embedded on your page.
Let's all work together to put the word out on this so it gets fixed ASAP. It seems to have started in the past 24-48 hours.
-
Additionally, we have already removed the blog feed from the home page to see if this would change things, and have requested a recrawl, which has happened. It did not solve the issue, and the dates still appear before the description in the SERPs for the home page, the substantial decline in ranking is still there.
Furthermore, the core pages of the site (home and services) are built in raw html, css etc, with no CMS (no Wordpress).
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
-
Huge difference between GSC ranking and browser ranking for certain keywords: How to proceed?
Hi, There is a huge ranking difference between the GSC and browser for our primary keyword. As per GSC, our ranking is around 15 and when checking on the multiple different incognito browsers it's around 50. How to handle this? Which is the accurate one? Product expert from Google forums claim that what I see on browsers are the personalized results; but I tried on different browsers with different connections. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | Dec 31, 2019, 4:37 AM | vtmoz0 -
About porn sites and ranking
Hello, I'm thinking to extend my website into porn. At the moment there is no pornography on it, although we do talk about sex related topics and products (from dating to tutorials, to toys etc.) Would it be dangerous to keep the porn section on the same domain as the rest? Would this negatively affect my non-porn content as Googlebot would "flag" my website as being pornographic (although only a few pages would be)? Or simply Googlebot would leave the current non-porn pages ranking as they are now, just fine, and plus it would rank the porn pages if they "deserve" to? I hope my question is clear. I don't want to create a subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | Dec 6, 2019, 5:31 AM | fabx0 -
Log-in page ranking instead of homepage due to high traffic on login page! How to avoid?
Hi all, Our log-in page is ranking in SERP instead of homepage and some times both pages rank for the primary keyword we targeted. We have even dropped. I am looking for a solution for this. Three points here to consider is: Our log-in page is the most visited page and landing page on the website. Even there is the primary keyword in this page or not; same scenario continues Log-in page is the first link bots touch when they crawling any page of our website as log-in page is linked on top navigation menu If we move login page to sub-domain, will it works? I am worrying that we loose so much traffic to our website which will be taken away from log-in page sub domain Please guide with your valuable suggestions. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | Nov 23, 2017, 10:26 AM | vtmoz0 -
W3C Validation: How Important is This to Ranking
Hi, I'm currently working with a developer who is trying to tell me that validation errors and warnings are of little to no importance in a website's SERP. In the past, whenever I've had a site that was experiencing problems ranking for a keyword terms, this was one of the first places we'd look. Is this still a relatively important component in getting a site to rank?
Algorithm Updates | Nov 19, 2014, 9:49 PM | maxcarnage2 -
Correlation of Rankings with Personal Pronouns?
Has there been any tests or studies that associate writing in the first person or using "emotional" feeling phrases to higher rankings. More specifically to a blog structure. I'm trying a blog option with a local telecommunications company, however I'm having flashbacks of writing those 5 paragraph essays when taking the SATs. The owner decided he should take on the responsibility and it's like he just can't bring himself to write from a personal perspective. He's a bit stuck in the "professional" mindset and worried about appearing unprofessional. I empathize with his perspective, but I know it's not going to work..or maybe it will? it's just not going to be interesting to readers, but perhaps google will appreciate the fresh content. I don't think letting an employee takeover will be an option as he's very protective of the company's image. So would you ditch the blog? or continue with the dull posts?
Algorithm Updates | May 8, 2012, 12:07 PM | squareplug0 -
Stop google indexing CDN pages
Just when I thought I'd seen it all, google hits me with another nasty surprise! I have a CDN to deliver images, js and css to visitors around the world. I have no links to static HTML pages on the site, as far as I can tell, but someone else may have - perhaps a scraper site? Google has decided the static pages they were able to access through the CDN have more value than my real pages, and they seem to be slowly replacing my pages in the index with the static pages. Anyone got an idea on how to stop that? Obviously, I have no access to the static area, because it is in the CDN, so there is no way I know of that I can have a robots file there. It could be that I have to trash the CDN and change it to only allow the image directory, and maybe set up a separate CDN subdomain for content that only contains the JS and CSS? Have you seen this problem and beat it? (Of course the next thing is Roger might look at google results and start crawling them too, LOL) P.S. The reason I am not asking this question in the google forums is that others have asked this question many times and nobody at google has bothered to answer, over the past 5 months, and nobody who did try, gave an answer that was remotely useful. So I'm not really hopeful of anyone here having a solution either, but I expect this is my best bet because you guys are always willing to try.
Algorithm Updates | Mar 15, 2012, 12:23 PM | loopyal0 -
Home page replaced by subpage in google SERP (good or bad)
SInce Panda, We have seen our home page drop from #2 in google.ie serp to page 3 but it has been replaced in the same position @#2 by our relevent sub page for the keyword that we ranked#2 for. Is this a good or bad thing from and seo point of view and is it better to have deep pages show in serp rather than the homepage of a site and what is the best line of action from here in relation to seo. Is it best to work on subpage or home page for that keyword and should link building for that phrase be directed towards the subpage or the homepage as the subpage is obviously more relevent in googles eyes for the search term. It is clear that all areas of the site should be looked at in relation to link building and deep links etc but now that google is obviously looking at relevancy very closely should all campaigns be sectioned into relevent content managed sections and the site likewise and treated on an individual basis. Any help that you may have would be very welcome. Paul
Algorithm Updates | Oct 12, 2011, 11:42 AM | mcintyr0 -
Using Brand Name in Page titles
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying: Product Name | Long brand name here Product Category | Long brand name here Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
Algorithm Updates | Jan 20, 2012, 4:03 PM | mlentner1