Help! My site is no longer ranking, but did not get penalty

[Sylviaontheweb]

My website (anti-agingweb.com) was doing quite well in the rankings and had a growth rate of about 60% each month. That suddenly changed on 27 April when I noticed a 90% drop in rankings. Ever since then my site has all but disappeared from the rankings and hardly receives any traffic.

I wrote a reconsideration request but recently received a notice that I did not violate any guidelines and that I was not penalized. I'm basically left to figure out myself why my rankings have dropped.

It seems then that perhaps the new algorythm is to blame. But can that really cuase a loss of traffic of more than 90%?

Also why was it caused? Here is a few things I noticed. I noticed that a lot of the pages that were indexed are from an image gallery I recently added (next gen gallery). Although I only added a few images it seeemed to have generated a lot of pages in the index. eg. anti-agingweb.com/over-40-fashion-gallery/?ngg-pid=10&r=80

Another thing I noticed is that there are quite a few indexed pages for my subscription plugin: eg.: anti-agingweb.com/comment-subscriptions?srp=13&sra=s

I wonder if all these pages could be considered as 'low content pages' and therefore the rest of site is undervalued.

In an attempt to delete these pages from the index I have added these commands to the robots file:
Disallow: /nggallery/
Disallow: /nggallery
Disallow: /over-40-fashion-style/?
Diaallow: /nggallery/post/
Disallow: /comment-subscriptions?
Disallow: /over-40-fashion-style/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/

However, a month later a lot of the pages mentioned above are still indexed.

Does anyone have a clue why my site suddenly doesn't rank anymore? Any ideas on how I could solve it? Am I doing something wrong that I'm not seeing?

Any help much appreciated!

[james7]

Somtimes it may happen don't worry. After few days it will ranked once again. But meantime don't stop the off page work.
The pages which are mentioned in robots.txt file, which you don't want to index, place the tag as follows on the same page <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
It helps you stop the indexing that page but allow the search engine to follow the links.

[Sylviaontheweb]

Well, it's more than a month ago now... Have lost all my motivation for the site to be honest.

I've heard of more sites losing their rankings and they are trying to get rid of their low quality pages. Although the pages described in my message above aren't really 'pages' at all, they are still indexed.

So wonder it that's caused it and how to get rid of them in the index. Thinking of deleting the subscription plugin and the whole gallery....

[Jack Chase]

SEO can take a long time - don't give up, keep slowly but consistently adding good content and building high quality backlinks to your site and eventually it will be a success!

[andrew jason]

got any update recently?
My site suffered same problem this morning and the rank was there two hours ago. kinda weird.

[Franksol]

I was hit with this same problem at about the same time as you do. My site has disappeared for about a month and still no signs of it. Site is still indexed with no violation warnings in WMT.

Any new discoveries so far? Do keep us updated.

[businesswarrior121]

check your site contents quality.google panda can affect your site.this new algorithm of google is causing very much suffer to many websites.

i think you should do some good quality seo in your site so that google can indexed very easily. do not he dishearten. keep your head cool and just concentrate on your site.

check the condition of similar pages in web. if you have quality contents and regular visitors, google will surely reward you.

[coolspot2]

mine did the same but after 2 months was back up onto the first page. maybe recent update could also be to blame

[App Developers]

I have heard of others with the same story. I would just keep on with your SEO and wait for it to re-appear. I have never read of anyone figuring it out but since you are not in violation it should re-appear.

[Sylviaontheweb]

Still no changes with my site. I agree that Panda may be to blame but a decline of more than 90% seems to be very steep! I have disallowed some pages to be indexed as Google could consider them low quality pages, but in fact these pages would be considered high quality by my viewers. For example pages with just a photo and a few lines of text. The photos take a lot of effert but as there is not a lot of text, Google may consider them low quality. Now that all those changes don't seem to help, I feel that I'm creating a bigger mess now and end up with a much smaller site...

I have been disheartened by this experience though as this was the site that I was putting all my efforts into without doing any black hat thing. My audience is not yet big enough to sustain the site by itself so I need the SE traffic to grow. At the moment I'm not inspired to write anymore for the site at all, so that doesn't help. Many sites above me are not better and in fact use tactics that Google disapproves of, but in the end that does not help me.

Considering what to do now. Options are just to wait and see what happens or letting an expert having a look at it as I'm sure there are things I could improve. Or concentrate on my other sites that have not been effected. Question is for how long? It's not nice to know that we're so completely dependent on Google for success and if they don't give you clear reasons as to why you have lost all your rankings, than I feel that all my online endouvours are at risk..

[thegotoguy]

How are you guys able to do accurate seaching through google?

IE search results are different from Firefox

Firefox shows different results with instant on, and doesn't match IE ever.

Anyone else notice this too? How do you know for sure where your site falls in the index for your main keywords? I've tried searching logged in and logged out in various different ways. Most of the time I'm on the first page at 3. But sometimes I'm on the 2nd page at 9 or 10.

[davidmeeonline]

The same thing happened to my main site I was concentrating on, about the same time!

It hasn't come back yet, but I am going to continue the SEO, and trust it will come back.

It was just bginning to work too....

[thegotoguy]

It's a weird game isn't it? SEO + SEO + SEO + wait... Hope... More SEO!

[Franksol]

Originally Posted by coolspot2

mine did the same but after 2 months was back up onto the first page. maybe recent update could also be to blame

Do you know what is the cause of your site's disappearance? What kind of changes did you make for it to come back? Or did it come back by itself after 2 months?

[Congrats]

I'm in the same boat as you. I was highly motivated with this site and i was very satisfied with how it was doing, until the sandbox thing happened. I don't believe it has anything to do with panda because it lost alomost all traffic. I did do some automatic backlinking with Article marketing robot and submitted about 10 comments. That was it.

I don't have much motivation now anymore after i've seen what google can do to your sites.

[Franksol]

Originally Posted by Congrats

I'm in the same boat as you. I was highly motivated with this site and i was very satisfied with how it was doing, until the sandbox thing happened. I don't believe it has anything to do with panda because it lost alomost all traffic. I did do some automatic backlinking with Article marketing robot and submitted about 10 comments. That was it.

I don't have much motivation now anymore after i've seen what google can do to your sites.

Is your site new too? I was hit with the same problem around the same time as the threadstarter. Lost almost all traffic as well and I did some automatic backlinking as you did. I am wondering if this could be the cause of the problem.

[Congrats]

Originally Posted by Franksol

Is your site new too? I was hit with the same problem around the same time as the threadstarter. Lost almost all traffic as well and I did some automatic backlinking as you did. I am wondering if this could be the cause of the problem.

Yes, i started this site in Januari, so it's pretty new. Normally i don't use automatic backlinking so I think it's because of that. But then again i had a lot of decent sites got hit by the panda update. So, i don't know what's going to happen.

[Franksol]

Anyone else got hit during this period too? Please help to chip in some opinions if you have managed to recover the sites!

[Frogbogz]

Hey everyone,

My wife's site was hit 6 months ago. It was back up in 3 weeks after that, it was surely due to an algorithm.

It was hit again a month ago and is not yet ranking. Our income depends heavily on her business website. There are no changes to her site made and she was ranking 2nd to 4th on the first page prior to this incident!!!!

This is very scary as we do not engage in any auto back linking or other google non friendly activities. We are as straight up as they come and all of her pages are original.

It's amazing how much control Google has over our lives.

[Elle Holder]

Originally Posted by Frogbogz

Hey everyone,

My wife's site was hit 6 months ago. It was back up in 3 weeks after that, it was surely due to an algorithm.

It was hit again a month ago and is not yet ranking. Our income depends heavily on her business website. There are no changes to her site made and she was ranking 2nd to 4th on the first page prior to this incident!!!!

This is very scary as we do not engage in any auto back linking or other google non friendly activities. We are as straight up as they come and all of her pages are original.

It's amazing how much control Google has over our lives.

Sorry about your problems, but I thought I should point out this thread is about a year old. Last spring the OP was dealing with the Panda update, and this spring it's Penguin. You might want to do a search on it and see what caused sites to drop. Links aren't the only issue. SEO is as well.

[Watch Store]

Originally Posted by Congrats

I'm in the same boat as you. I was highly motivated with this site and i was very satisfied with how it was doing, until the sandbox thing happened. I don't believe it has anything to do with panda because it lost alomost all traffic. I did do some automatic backlinking with Article marketing robot and submitted about 10 comments. That was it.

I don't have much motivation now anymore after i've seen what google can do to your sites.

AMR was hit in the last Penguin update

[SEO Genius]

The problem is your anchor text "Sylvia" accounts for more than 60% of your backlinks. The penguin devalued sites that had over 60% of their backlinks "money keywords" and also punished you if those links were n't from niche related sites. I wrote about it in this thread:

How To Penguin Proof Your Site