Sudden drop in rank for google.com but not .ca ?

[effectivesite]

I'm working on a new site which is an aged, PR3 e-commerce site with a large volume of site-wide backlinks from similarly themed sites, but aside from that very little other types of backlinks.

I worked on this site for a month and ranks were increasing across the board, but then in the past 2 days the rankings for a variety of keywords dropped right off on google.com and a bunch of keywords aren't showing at all. On google.ca however (it's a .ca site said to be in Canada in webmaster tools) the ranking results have stayed exactly the same, and even improved a bit.

I don't think anything damaging was done, but here's what I did:

3 high quality articles which were well spun & submitted to 30 directories each.
Posted a Press Release to 10 pr sites.
Wrote a post on a blog about it.
submitted site to 100 social bookmarking sites with different ip addresses, accounts, etc.
commented on 10 blogs w a mix of nofollow & dofollow
submitted site to 100 high pr directories.

Any idea what this could be? The terms which are ranking the same or even slightly beter in google.ca have plummeted in google.com.

Thanks for the help.

[effectivesite]

Another strange thing, Bing in the US mirrors the Google.com changes but with slightly different changes in how many places each word dropped.

[BenSalez]

Google Dance. Your rankings will come back.

[boxoun]

Not everything is Google dance. Check for duplicate content. Next time be more specific. Where did the page drop to? 500+ is usually "sandbox"

[effectivesite]

Originally Posted by boxoun

Not everything is Google dance. Check for duplicate content. Next time be more specific. Where did the page drop to? 500+ is usually "sandbox"

It didn't drop past 500 for any previously ranking keyword but the jumps are extremely drastic. one term which I did create a single link to last month went from 15th to 329th within a day on google.com but remained in second place on google.ca.

The brand name without spaces remained top in google, but the brand name with a space which I built an equal number of links to and it's also the home page ranking top for it went from 1st to 13th on .com but stayed 1st on google.ca

these changes seem too drastic to be just google dance... i've never seen changes like this on google.com when the site's targetted .ca remains the same.

[TheFBGuy]

Originally Posted by effectivesite

I'm working on a new site which is an aged, PR3 e-commerce site with a large volume of site-wide backlinks from similarly themed sites, but aside from that very little other types of backlinks.

I worked on this site for a month and ranks were increasing across the board, but then in the past 2 days the rankings for a variety of keywords dropped right off on google.com and a bunch of keywords aren't showing at all. On google.ca however (it's a .ca site said to be in Canada in webmaster tools) the ranking results have stayed exactly the same, and even improved a bit.

I don't think anything damaging was done, but here's what I did:

3 high quality articles which were well spun & submitted to 30 directories each.
Posted a Press Release to 10 pr sites.
Wrote a post on a blog about it.
submitted site to 100 social bookmarking sites with different ip addresses, accounts, etc.
commented on 10 blogs w a mix of nofollow & dofollow
submitted site to 100 high pr directories.

Any idea what this could be? The terms which are ranking the same or even slightly beter in google.ca have plummeted in google.com.

Thanks for the help.

All this activity in 1 month for a site that had no activity at all...?

[effectivesite]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

All this activity in 1 month for a site that had no activity at all...?

It had some activity just no one actively working on it. It's a 4 year old domain with a decent link base.


Might have just found the problem though. I think they just purchased a bunch of site wide links (I've told them not to already) ... I'll post whether it's true. Still seems strange to me it would have only effective .com and not .ca where it targets.

[TheFBGuy]

Originally Posted by effectivesite

It had some activity just no one actively working on it. It's a 4 year old domain with a decent link base.


Might have just found the problem though. I think they just purchased a bunch of site wide links (I've told them not to already) ... I'll post whether it's true. Still seems strange to me it would have only effective .com and not .ca where it targets.

Doesn't matter how old a domain is, too much "sudden" activity with Google's new algo can raise flags, and your recent and sudden activity did just that.

Those weak side wide links has nothing to do with it, side wide links are a thing of the past.

[effectivesite]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

Doesn't matter how old a domain is, too much "sudden" activity with Google's new algo can raise flags, and your recent and sudden activity did just that.

Those weak side wide links has nothing to do with it, side wide links are a thing of the past.

The ranks normalized to what they were a couple days ago now.

I'm 95% sure it was the site wide links. Turns out they purchased them on a large site with a couple thousand pages indexed that day and it's just an image link with no alt tag, which was put alongside a dozen or so other similar links.

That much link building activity is really nothing too when it's over a month and most of the directory submissions wouldn't be accepted for months.

It might have been the combination of link building coinciding with with site wide's, but I feel there's no doubt they had a roll to play... it does matter how old the domain is and it's previous link activity.... increased activity on an established site is not the same as sudden activity on a brand new domain.