What the heck happened to this website?

by Will_Surren

Posted: 15 years ago 24 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

An outsourcing nightmare....

Ok, I have an issue and I am looking to the warriors to help me realize just how bad the issue is. One of my niche' sites has lost major ranking in Google a few weeks after outsourcing some work. This site has always been in positions 1 & 2 and the name of the site is the keyword that I was ranking for and wish I was still ranking for. I know that I have not been black listed because the site is still in Google when I search info:sitename.com

I have never had this happen so I am going to describe what happened to see if anyone knows how this will play out for me.

2 weeks ago I noticed my site had dropped to page 3 and I thought, humm... wonder what's wrong??? Then I thought I'm sure it will come back.... I have had sites drop and come back before so I was not too worried...

I checked again today and it is not ranking in the top 25 pages. I am not sure how far it has dropped but I do know that it is still in Google's database.

I started digging through my site to see if I could find a reason for this massive drop and I found a few issues.

The site categories cover all US States. I outsourced having a page created for each State in order to have all categories show in WordPress.

Here are the issues I found...

1. The pages look like they were mostly the same content with the name of the State Being Changed for each. Many of the sentences were the same word combinations. The pages look like a spun version with the state name being changed.

2. All categories were named using the state name such as Florida and then the word Events... So every state like Georgia Events and so on.... The description of each category was also the same with only the state name being different.

3. Within the same timeframe, I had a link wheel built using some social sites and bloggs... There are 18 total pages in the link wheel.

4. Also, within the same timeframe, I removed my adsense ads...

What I have done so far to try and correct the issue

Deleted all of the pages that look like duplicates
Removed the word "events" from the categories and left the category name as just the name of the state.

My question are:

With the changes that were made to the site just before the drop, Which of these do you think made the site drop so drasticly?
Is the site a lost cause or will Google take another look and allow me to get the ranking back?
Is there a process to go through that would get Google to take another look at the site?

My main concern is getting back in to good grace with Google for this site. I have never had an issue like this and most of my sites are ranking on the first page for the keywords that I have targeted.

Any advice you can give me on this would be greatly appreciated.

#duplicate content #forgive #google #nightmare #oursource #page rank #seo #wordpress

Will_Surren 15 years ago

I almost forgot... If you have been in this situation and found a way to correct your errors, please PM me... I really want to save this site... The traffic of the past couple of weeks is killing me.
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Ofthemix

15 years ago

I'm not a website building expert by any means, but from what you're describing it sounds like you're a victim of Google's duplicate content penalty. I've read several places that you will lose search ranking if you have a lot of duplicate or similar pages on your own website.

Deleting all of the dup pages is the best thing you can do. I would personally add a bunch of fresh new content and see if your ranking goes up in Google. If all else fails, you might want to contact Google and inquire about this. Below is Google's contact info and a link to the page where I got this info:

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001

Contact Us

Good luck with your website.

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1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Thank you for the suggestions...

Anyone know which of these issues are most likely to have caused my problem in ranking?

Thanks
1 reply

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Thomson

15 years ago

Well, I think the problem is with the content of your website or with the backlinks you have got for it.

If the problem is of the content, I would suggest you to remove all the pages which look similar to each other and then add some pages with new content slowly.

If you have already done this and the site is still not getting rankings on Google, I would suggest you to check if you still have all the backlinks especially, backlinks from high rankings websites. It might be possible that you have lost some of the backlinks from high ranking websites which has affected your website rankings in search engines.

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1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Thomson

I have cleaned up all of the dup content... I think... I looked through every post that she created and anything that looked like another post I removed..

As far as backlinks everything looks the same. So I don't think I lost anything there.

Do you think the link wheel could cause any problems? Should I remove the links from the link wheel pages as well?

Thanks
2 replies

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Thomson 15 years ago

As you have removed all the duplicate content from your website and all the backlinks to the website are the same, I would suggest you to keep the website the same for a couple of days and check the rankings.

If the rankings of your website fell down or there are no improvements, you can remove the links in the link wheel and check if there are some improvements.

Generally, it is not seen that the link wheel causes a problem, however, it might be possible that the link wheel is causing problems for your website rankings.

Good luck!!
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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by StepOneWeb

Hey,

Maybe slightly off topic but if you want to track your google position over time I've made a tool for it.

StepOneWeb - Google rank tool

The tool automatically stores past rank position of a keyword/domain. The next time you use the tool for the same keyword and domain you can compare against other dates you've used the tool and see if theres a position change. And it searches the full 1000 results on any keyword.

Great tool.... Thanks for the tip. Is this your script? Do you know where to get a copy of this script?

I used the tool and found that my rank fell to 287 from position 1-2. Wow!!! What a crush to my traffic.... Ok, So for now I will wait another week to see what happens.. In the mean time I will add this site to my Google account. Already have a site map but I don't like to connect all of my sites to my account. I believe there is a point where you give Google too much info so I only have a few of my sites linked to my account.

Thanks guys for your tips and if anyone else has more info to share on this, please leave comments... This is not a fun situation to be in with a site and is a lesson learned on outsourcing. I will get the articles written by the person and add to my own site in the future.

Thanks

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banless

15 years ago

I agree with the content issue, but one thing you might want to think about is that deleting the pages will not really help your cause, if you want to the pages to be removed from the index then you need to add a noindex tag to your source code, until you do that then it highly likely that those pages will stay in the index.

Thanks
1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by banless

I am not aware of a way to noindex a wordpress page. Do you know of a way to add noindex tag to WP?

Thanks
1 reply

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chessguy

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Will_Surren

I am not aware of a way to noindex a wordpress page. Do you know of a way to add noindex tag to WP?

Login to wordpress, Appearances->Theme Editor. Then edit header.php

Put this in the <head> section:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Thanks
1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by chessguy

Login to wordpress, Appearances->Theme Editor. Then edit header.php

Put this in the <head> section:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

I have the same header for my whole site... If I do this, will it not cause my whole site to be noindex?

Thanks
1 reply

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chessguy

15 years ago

Oops! Thanks for not following that advice...sorry.

Thanks
1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by chessguy

Oops! Thanks for not following that advice...sorry.

Is there some other way to noindex certain pages on a wordpress site?

Thanks
1 reply

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Matrixzer0

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Will_Surren

Is there some other way to noindex certain pages on a wordpress site?

Plugins like Robots Meta Version 3.2.2 | By Joost de Valk | Visit plugin site.
I have been using it a while and it works very well.

Goes great with Google XML Sitemaps Version 3.1.6 | By Arne Brachhold at | Visit plugin site |
IF you want any go stuff to help you just Pm me.

Thanks
1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Matrixzer0

thanks, going to check them out now!!!

Thanks

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CliveG 15 years ago

A little off topic, but hopefully useful information.

If you don't already, create a sitemap and use Google Webmaster Tools to inform Google that your site has been updated. You can also use Webmaster Tools to see how often Google "looks" at your site and when the last "look" was. Other useful information is also provided.
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learningstuff 15 years ago

I can't say what your exact problem is, but I recently had a similar problem where my page dropped drastically. Mind you, it was never really ranking well in the first place. But I eventually figured out the problem. It was a backlink issue. My blog was linked from another blog. On that blog, it gives a link to my blog site as well as a link to the most recent post. It was the most recent post that I was trying to rank for. This blog where I got the backlink had hundreds of pages, and my link was site-wide, so that was basically a backlink for each page on the site. What happened was that when I created a new post, the link from the other blog still pointed to my site, but now it had a different link for the most recent post. So essentially this post lost a lot of backlinks suddenly, and hence the reason for it's fall.

You said your backlinks look the same, but how have you checked it? If you use yahoo site explorer for example, it takes a while to reflect your backlinks, so you might not see any change there, even though google already sees the big difference.

Anyway, that was my issue, not sure if it applies to you.
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PatriciaJ

15 years ago

One of my niche blogs has ranked 2nd for 4 different keyphrases for over a year and last month it disappeared out of the rankings for most of the month. Traffic dropped from about 7,000 uniques a month to 2,000 but I never found out why. Then it righted itself and the traffic and rankings came back.

The same may happen with you, but it reminded me that I haven't done as much with that blog as I should have so it's time to knock that other site off the top!

Thanks
1 reply

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Some new information here... I am hoping that someone can tell me what this is...

I have found that all of my pages contain hidden text. I didn't put this text on the site but I found it because my site was being found by the words in the hidden text and after setting up the domain on my webmaster tools in google the keywords for the wrong niche were showing as my main traffic.

Please look at this code and let me know if you know what program or virus would insert this in my site.

<div class="tf_1" style="position:absolute;width:120px;height:9px;ov erflow:hidden;">
<h1 style="font-size:10px;"><br class="tf_2" /><br class="tf_2" />[[T_F]]<a target="_blank" href="http://www.TraceFusion.com/">Data Leak Prevention – Data Security Solutions – Information Theft Protection, Detection and Prevention Software Products</a>tracefusion_signature=b2e59f53b5167930380710e1d3 4b98a055327ca00d5ec896805a2b0b4a9cc597a298da8b1661 51324dc8c4602afdc3eb84cd6ecf4afb8257b30ac03f73891d 05b0db0fbe876ccbbe063acac11b3c31503a7b18571815cd3d 6f4fe917b51456ba5611d8e68d1e02209c532242a7eb3c0aab 3b3e244b7b6986e73c087aa1a5be71c2a6ced96a2868ebeb4b c86fc8080348e1a08e106dd18a146f75b01a5012082b88f360 eb69f0eb1b59b36d5508c24e7742a5b1a59dcd6e262e3b72b4 df8bafff43c224a8461a0ee1256416b29dbd2f32c2eb7d772b fbc57183c5294f874a95ba2d6321e47baedb9fd28cb8125a3e 89b592a431376e746084b8729d0bb21ecbe9d62e31fb3128e8 fe40fa41dd9f487b729d8faa5686995f77ec238cda9961f997 a6e8fcd3b70cc1740c37d4aa85f1c5b2253e9a73feeb1fa7d6 5721b32c0eb7cfd41500201d3439ff37cec2f8ace75aea1a5f a6b297dac82c81d9f2342e7d53eb090d21b4efab83077376fc dea8029243714e0b7fe4a469af8e7c6aef0f6b556f466b3650 2c1862561a07756dcf13247407b225b0b21f9a0c781e814cda afc9780eaa72314de29f741a24d1642b92a087d1544e7243b4 f0534d4a1191d5f718d591cdb927e4f0b8f7494b8d8a353b7f 59bd8907b7a25d261884fb7f3fd90a20271b443d02ed321d04 bfb81d50429a00f5199088d168d6bef586105769ac85376e4c 9ea919c1322c83f93e1da5b1bba4c92129c0429c0770749c2b 6538f43ae9b1cb94d180110089c16b957551f37a9168efcb62 899a2a3bb6b5261b4379d56dd0c9a3a508ffabf8e9ffabfaa1[[T_F]]</h1>
</div>
The words were not visible on my pages but I found the info by viewing page source. I also did a find on my page and when I did I found that the text was behind an image.

Thanks
1 reply

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Steve Diamond

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Will_Surren

Please look at this code and let me know if you know what program or virus would insert this in my site.

That looks like a content protection signature inserted by the Memberwing Wordpress plugin, using TraceFusion to protect premium membership content.

Steve

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Will_Surren

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Steve Diamond

That looks like a content protection signature inserted by the Memberwing Wordpress plugin, using TraceFusion to protect premium membership content.

Steve

Do you know why it would show "data leak prevention" in hidden text? There were several entries of data keywords in my google webmaster tools that I was ranking for and this has nothing to do with my niche'. Are those keywords part of memberwing or was that added?

Thanks

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John Romaine 15 years ago

I always keep a change log for each site within a spreadsheet. I actively monitor all of my sites positionings typically daily.

ALWAYS - make ONE CHANGE, and sit it out before doing anything else, to see if it has a negative or positive effect. Making numerous changes leads to total chaos.

I would suggest rolling back, sitting it out until you are back where you were, regathering and thinking about how best to move forward.

In the meantime, I would seriously question the capabilities and professionalism of whoever is doing your outsourcing work.

I hope you get it sorted dude. Best of luck.
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- rosetrees 15 years ago
  
  I wonder if your link wheel is the cause of the problem?
  
  Here's a quote from Lemonarian, inventor of the wheel "Now, it seems Google's caught on. So I recommend you STOP doing perfect wheels and start mixing it up."
  
  This came in one of his emails.
  
  Just a thought.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  Will_Surren 15 years ago
  
  My site is now back near the top but not good enough yet... It is now in position 12.. I am not sure what brought it up this far. I removed the duplicate content on my site and the repeated word in each category. One or both of these helped. I did not make any changes to the link wheel. So I wanted to get back here to let everyone know that the link wheel is still in place and my rank has improved a great deal.
  
  here is the movement after making the changes
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com
  2009-10-02 22:57: 12
  Improved from
  2009-10-01 02:05: 290
  Lower then
  2009-09-30 00:25: 287
  
  Thanks
  
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What the heck happened to this website?

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