After 3 months being consistent on #1 spot, my rankings dropped today

[tapori2010]

Hi,

Today, 4 of my websites dropped rankings to the 2nd and 3rd page from #1 spot and after being on 1st page for about 3 months or more.

I am still building quality links to those sites. I wonder what made all these 4 fours sites drop rankings today all of a sudden. Could this be a google dance? But my sites are established and unique quality content and high pr backlinks.

Please help.

thanks

[donblack11]

I've had that happen before on multiple occasions. This in general is very bad news.

Since it was a chain site decrease, here are the causes and explanations:
1. -30, -50 penalty, search it up yourself. Low quality aff site, strong/spammy. These sites are dead, build new ones.

2. Too many links at one keyword. All sites used the same
Backlink technique. Drops 2-3 pages. Includes homepage backlinks being overused. Sites come back after several months to a year. Go build new sites and don't
Make the same mistake.

[Matt Red]

Just keep building high quality links, if you had the content to keep the sites on top, it means that you have good content. You might have gotten a bad batch of links or something like that. Check your incoming links, get rid of any spammy ones, and keep building high authority ones.

[Matt Attack]

This happened to a chunk of my sites back in mid october and they still have not fully recovered. Just keep up your link building efforts but build higher quality backlinks.

[beakon]

This just happened to one of my sites as well today. It's a blog with many pages and it seems 90% of all their rankings have dropped a full 1-2 pages. I was number 1-3 for quite a few keywords which are now all on page 2 or 3.

I actually have a message in my webmaster tools from google in mid December saying that they have detected some of my pages having unnatural links. Now my entire site has been slapped nearly a month later.

The site is by no means thin, it's actively updated, has a strong PR, and have a very active user base with many many comments added each and every week bringing lots of value for viewers. So for them to slap me compared to some other sites in my niche would be a complete contradiction of what google is looking for in sites.

I'm 100% sure someone is trying to sabotage me as I have found numerous backlinks that I've never made that are clearly an attempt to damage my sites reputation with google. When I file my reconsideration request I will be notifying google of this as I feel rather helpless about the situation. It would take me months of manual labour just to try to find and have all these garbage sabotage links removed.

This is my first experience with such a situation

[Rotablade]

I had the same happen to my best site number 1 on two key terms for many months. Dropped to number 8 on top term and number 2 on second. Another 10 keywords on page one and two have dropped up to 400-800 places or more. Only service I used was High PR Society. Am suspicious that the links were either too much too quick or poor IP diversity. Anyone had experience of High PR Society?

[blogfreakz]

same here thou about the keyword that I used but I'm still consistently doing the necessary link building effort to bring it back up to the number one spot.

[3000]

Try adding fresh new content. It could be that your sites haven't been updated in a long time.

[beakon]

Originally Posted by 3000

Try adding fresh new content. It could be that your sites haven't been updated in a long time.

My site has fresh new content added almost every single day for the past 3 years solid. Over the past year the site has really started to excel and rank high for big time keywords which seemed to attract some unwanted exposure. I'm almost positive one or two of my competitors got sick of seeing me everywhere in the top 3 and pushing them down and have started sabotaging me. I've gone 3+ years with this site with all whitehat linkbuilding and now all of a sudden I start seeing all these unusual garbage backlinks. Then I get a warning from Google to stop and fix these unnatural links?

The theory that you can't sabotage your competition is complete BS imo.

My site is one of if not the most valuable site in it's niche for searchers with community discussions and independent reviews, so the content is definitely not the reason for the slap. They now have some of the thinnest, un-educated pile of trash affiliate sites in the top 5 for most of these big keywords.

What a complete joke.

[GeorgR.]

Here too.

Please stop giving useless tips like "just build more links"...some sites were #1 for YEARS.

There was some algorithm change going on beginning of this year and i GUESS Google is targeting all kinds of affiliate sites again.

[freeson]

Believe me, this is a big problem that Google penalize your site for having unnatural backlink by only having only high PR backlink, you should have other many low quality backlink for PR0 and PR1 website in order to make it look natural in the eye of Gooogle.

[honestbizpro]

Originally Posted by beakon

My site has fresh new content added almost every single day for the past 3 years solid. Over the past year the site has really started to excel and rank high for big time keywords which seemed to attract some unwanted exposure. I'm almost positive one or two of my competitors got sick of seeing me everywhere in the top 3 and pushing them down and have started sabotaging me. I've gone 3+ years with this site with all whitehat linkbuilding and now all of a sudden I start seeing all these unusual garbage backlinks. Then I get a warning from Google to stop and fix these unnatural links?

The theory that you can't sabotage your competition is complete BS imo.

My site is one of if not the most valuable site in it's niche for searchers with community discussions and independent reviews, so the content is definitely not the reason for the slap. They now have some of the thinnest, un-educated pile of trash affiliate sites in the top 5 for most of these big keywords.

What a complete joke.

These days there are people launching products and programs with the sole purpose to spy and teach you how to knock someone out the top spots...but most people do not realize that it applies to us all sooner or later.

I remember watching a movie where some kidnappers were confident that their phone conversation could not be traced because they had something called the Phone Blaster 3000 but the victim had something called like the Phone Blaster Blaster that traced him anyway.

I think everyone getting consistent rankings at the top of the page is a "target on lock" and unfortunately it is part of the game we have to play.

Just have to keep checking links, and building new ones.

Another tactic I would suggest is building multiple sites in the same niche..different product, and dominating most of the front page anyway.

[amherstsowell]

on 6th of jan 2012 google has changed its search algo. please do work very carefully. don't use any spam technique.

[GeorgR.]

Amherst, do you have any links and more info on that?

[richardtj]

Taken a look through the latest google update and it shouldn't have affected your ranking at all see seochemist.com/SEO/new-google-algorithm-updates-kick-off-jan-2012 New Google Algorithm Updates Kick off Jan 2012[/url]). Would suggest you may "albeit paranoid" be correct about loss of backlinks. However, although it could be due to corrupt competitors, I have to wonder whether it's links from "bad neighbourhoods", particualrly given the field you're working in- Ergo, the links you've got are not from sites that are reputable and have used short lived tactics to get up Google that have in effect got them blacklisted (please don't take this the wrong way, it's the sites linking to you that have done piss poor work, not you). However, given that, it is pretty easy (IMHO) to get a competitor's rankings to fall- simply get the sites they're linked from blacklisted/ sandboxed- especially with the likes of blogs using Disqus!

[pankajchandel123]

On 5th or 6th of jan my all keywordsdropped from top spots to 300 position

[Jokyv]

try to add fresh unique content and dont stop building backlinks. If you stop suddenly then google will know that you were building backlinks and that they werent coming naturally!

[richardtj]

Okay folks, done a little digging though Matt Cutt's Blog and there was a release by Google During December 201 that they then blogged about on 5 Jan 2012. The post is at: insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/30-search-quality-highlights-with.html?spref=tw. It refers in item 4 to: More accurate country-restricted searches. [launch codename “greencr”] On domains other than .com (I'm assuming they're refering to google.com), users have the option to see only results from their particular country. This is a new algorithm that uses several signals to better determine where web documents are from, improving the accuracy of this feature. Hope that helps.

[feliciayapsl]

Keep building quality links to it & write unique content. It should come back up.