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Cause of Multiple Websites Dropping Heavily In Google Rankings?

by woodywho55178
23 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've seen tons of threads about somebody having a their website drop off the face of Google and having kind individuals explain the probable causes of it. Well, I had TWO sites drop (not banned) at about the same exact time, both of which are 3+ years old. Now, I'm not the most savvy SEO person, but I knew enough to get both of these websites ranked pretty well for some competitive keywords, as well as tons of other smaller, long tail keywords. Now? 98% of that traffic just went *poof*. It could just be a hiccup with Google, or something minor, but it happened to two of my websites, not just one. I checked all of the major causes and none of them seem to fit. The only thing I did recently was get a lot (about 1,000) of backinks (via forums).

Has anybody had a sudden and harsh SE drop with multiple websites before? If so, what ended up being the problem/issue? And yes, they are hosted on the same server with 10 new(ish) websites, but I could not see any down time in the logs.
#dropping #google #heavily #multiple #rankings #websites
  • Profile picture of the author mox
    If you got 1000+ links in forums in a short period of time Google might have sandboxed your sites due to spamming of links.... but there could be another explanation.

    Rankings can change each google update, and its not uncommon to see changes, but you say your sites are 3 years old and if they were consistently ranking high for a long time and then suddenly dropped I think google did not like something you did.

    Do you have any duplicate or very similar sites to these two?

    How far did they drop? Can you even find them now or did they just drop a page or so?
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    • Profile picture of the author woodywho55178
      Originally Posted by mox View Post


      Do you have any duplicate or very similar sites to these two?

      How far did they drop? Can you even find them now or did they just drop a page or so?
      They are in two totally different niches. For one of the niches, I have a few other websites comparable to the one that dropped, but not even close to being a duplicate. The other site that dropped is all by itself, as I own no other website dedicated to the niche.

      They dropped off the charts. Honestly, I quit looking after 30 pages of results, as compared to before, when I was on page 1 for many of the keywords. They aren't banned, as I checked that already, but something happened and I am not involved in blackhat. Forum backlinks is about as risky as I go. Everything else is pretty darn natural. The only thing I can think of, since it is with two websites in completely different niches, is server downtime, or Google not liking something I did. If they didn't like something, I have no clue what it could be.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mac27771960
        Hi,
        I'm just getting used to all of this IM stuff (relearning after an horrendous experience) and I've recived a lot of scare email suggesting that Google ban people for no apparent reason. The gist of this suggests it's nearly always sites that use Adsense, is there any truth to this?

        Mac.
        Signature
        I'm just starting out so I 'spose this signature will change in time
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  • Profile picture of the author verbose
    Check Your Google webmaster tools to see if there are any issues with them. Also add a bit of new content and see if this helps
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    • Profile picture of the author woodywho55178
      Originally Posted by verbose View Post

      Check Your Google webmaster tools to see if there are any issues with them. Also add a bit of new content and see if this helps
      I doubt that it is about adding content, as it was two different sites, in two different niches. Both are updated pretty regularly. That's why I'm trying to get input on having multiple sites kicked to Google's curb. If it was one site, I could backtrack. With two sites, which are both updated regularly on different days, with mostly different backlinking for each, I can't pin point what it may be. Like I said before, the only thing I did the same for both was the huge forum backlinking about a month ago.
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  • Profile picture of the author woodywho55178
    Originally Posted by Daniel McGonagle View Post

    I had several mini sites that this happened to.

    They're all back now, after 3 weeks of lower rankings...

    Back to where they were before.

    The fix is simple: more new content and links; same as always

    Thanks. That gives me at least a little hope! :O)

    I could probably pay a bit more attention to them as far as fresh content goes. I am definitely going to do that. That's one of the "causes" that I actually have control of right now. I will do everything in my power to get them back to where they were, as I surely don't want to go back to a 9-5 job just yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
    Originally Posted by woodywho55178 View Post

    I've seen tons of threads about somebody having a their website drop off the face of Google and having kind individuals explain the probable causes of it. Well, I had TWO sites drop (not banned) at about the same exact time, both of which are 3+ years old. Now, I'm not the most savvy SEO person, but I knew enough to get both of these websites ranked pretty well for some competitive keywords, as well as tons of other smaller, long tail keywords. Now? 98% of that traffic just went *poof*. It could just be a hiccup with Google, or something minor, but it happened to two of my websites, not just one. I checked all of the major causes and none of them seem to fit. The only thing I did recently was get a lot (about 1,000) of backinks (via forums).

    Has anybody had a sudden and harsh SE drop with multiple websites before? If so, what ended up being the problem/issue? And yes, they are hosted on the same server with 10 new(ish) websites, but I could not see any down time in the logs.
    Do they still have a cache available for the pages in question? I had the same thing happen in middle of may to just ONE of my sites. It disappeared completely from all SERPS and has never returned. The only discernible factor that I can see to identify this problem is that the cache for all of the pages which were ranking is gone. The option isn't even available anymore. I definitely received some sort of penalty on the site. Whether it was manual or algorithmic, I don't know. It could have been from a spam report filed by my competitors because I was dominating all of them.

    The site was built on 80% forum profile backlinks so I've gotten away from those since this happened. Weird thing is it didn't happen to any of my other sites which had a similar backlink profile. It's very challenging to determine what the best route for you is. Follow Daniel Mcgonagle's advice and add some content and backlinks. If that doesn't have an impact, then I wouldn't keep pouring time into them.
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    • Profile picture of the author woodywho55178
      Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

      Follow Daniel Mcgonagle's advice and add some content and backlinks. If that doesn't have an impact, then I wouldn't keep pouring time into them.
      Thanks for the input. Yeah, I was trying (I guess not hard enough!) not to turn this into a "why did my website get eaten by Google's lawn mowing goats" thread. I was just seeing if some fellow Warriors have had multiple sites go way down at the same time and if they actually found the cause.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

      The site was built on 80% forum profile backlinks so I've gotten away from those since this happened. Weird thing is it didn't happen to any of my other sites which had a similar backlink profile. It's very challenging to determine what the best route for you is. Follow Daniel Mcgonagle's advice and add some content and backlinks. If that doesn't have an impact, then I wouldn't keep pouring time into them.
      That's a top notch observation.

      And a lot of those forum profiles go away. I wish threads posting lists of forums to
      spam profile links to would be banned.

      You win some, you lose some. If you do good things, over time, google will like
      75% of what you come up with. The other 25% is GD, "google's decision."

      Too many people are hung up on google 100% of the time. If google gets
      a tad less than 75% of the search traffic, what does that tell you? Me, it
      tells me that solid sites are safe. The others are on a constant up down
      basis as google tries to "improve" (tweak) their results.

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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      • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        That's a top notch observation.

        And a lot of those forum profiles go away. I wish threads posting lists of forums to
        spam profile links to would be banned.

        You win some, you lose some. If you do good things, over time, google will like
        75% of what you come up with. The other 25% is GD, "google's decision."

        Too many people are hung up on google 100% of the time. If google gets
        a tad less than 75% of the search traffic, what does that tell you? Me, it
        tells me that solid sites are safe. The others are on a constant up down
        basis as google tries to "improve" (tweak) their results.

        Paul
        Yes I've realized the best links are the ones which drive traffic and benefit my search ranking. Ones that will stick indefinitely. One thing I've noticed throughout all of this is the links that stick around the longest seem to be the most beneficial.

        In further thinking, it seems completely unnatural for links to disappear. In most cases when people link on the web, the link sticks around for a long time. So if you've got a bunch of links pointing to your site that keep getting removed and replaced it has got to set off some flags somewhere. At least I would think so.
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        • Profile picture of the author HunterSnake
          Hello everyone,

          I've had a very interesting experience recently related to the topic of this thread. I'm not sure if my story is coincidence or not but, here it is.

          On the 19th, one of my websites was page #1, rank #2 for every relevant term. All other semi-relevant terms or sub-terms were page #2 at most. This wasn't just Google US but, rather, globally, i.e. Google.co.uk, Google.ca, etc. A few days later, my website had completely vanished from search results. All I did was rename my privacy policy page from privacy.html to privacy.php and forgot to put a redirect from privacy.html to privacy.php. I noticed in my logs that Googlebot got a 404 when trying to call the .html and within 12 hours my site was screwed.

          I added the redirect, Google found and indexed the .php within 48 hours, and I went back to page #1 but now instead of second from the top I am second from the bottom and this is only for one term. I can't find my site for any of the other terms anymore. Google TrustRank is seldom talked about but many speculate having a valid privacy policy plays a role in that. Unless this is a coincidence, I can verify that having a privacy policy that Google can find does matter a lot. Matt Cutts often talks about how it's important whether or not Google trusts a site... Who knows. I didn't change or do anything else but rename that file.

          My websites are all 100% W3C validated, abide by the Ask.com, Bing, Google, and Yahoo! Webmaster Guidelines, have 100% unique, well-written, quality organic content, and I don't do any bad on-page SEO. Everything is proper... Nothing done to upset the almighty big G, at least as far as their publicly available rules and policies are concerned.

          Originally Posted by woodywho55178 View Post

          The only thing I did recently was get a lot (about 1,000) of backinks (via forums).
          That shouldn't matter at all. Google doesn't penalize websites for things that they potentially have no control over. If exterior factors, such as link spam, could negatively influence one's rank, everyone would blackhat SEO their competitors externally to devalue their ranks and improve their own. Since anybody could have gotten those 1000 links, potentially without your knowledge, Google shouldn't penalize you. As far as I know, they don't.

          Originally Posted by mox View Post

          If you got 1000+ links in forums in a short period of time Google might have sandboxed your sites due to spamming of links.... but there could be another explanation.
          The sandbox doesn't exist in the way it's commonly purported. Again, something that a webmaster potentially has absolutely no control over, i.e. exterior factors such as who links to them, spam or not, shouldn't at all affect rankings.

          Originally Posted by woodywho55178 View Post

          Honestly, I quit looking after 30 pages of results, as compared to before, when I was on page 1 for many of the keywords.
          Same symptom as I have, that's why I'm not sure whether or not it had to do with my privacy policy issue. If it's unrelated to the privacy policy issue, I question why when Google refound it my rank went back to page #1 but not where it was page #1... Still confused there.

          Originally Posted by Daniel McGonagle View Post

          I had several mini sites that this happened to.

          They're all back now, after 3 weeks of lower rankings...

          Back to where they were before.

          The fix is simple: more new content and links; same as always
          I can only hope that I have the same kind of results and experience. My income is from my projects so whenever Google does these dances it can be quite frustrating.

          Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

          It could have been from a spam report filed by my competitors because I was dominating all of them.
          Anybody can file a spam report. Google isn't stupid. Let's say you ranked #1 for Car Batteries and your competition, who ranked #2, decided to spam a ton of forums and blogs and all sorts of madness, seemingly on your behalf. Then, they file a Google spam report claiming that it was in fact YOU who was doing the spamming. There's no proof, and because you can potentially be framed, Google won't act on that. HOWEVER, if your website, which is on your server, which you do have control over is doing something bad and someone reports that, then, yea, if Google agrees, you're screwed because it's entirely under your control.

          Google takes a lot of precautions to prevent not only one's own manipulation attempts to boost their site but their competitors attempts to tear it all down.
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          • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
            Originally Posted by HunterSnake View Post

            Anybody can file a spam report. Google isn't stupid. Let's say you ranked #1 for Car Batteries and your competition, who ranked #2, decided to spam a ton of forums and blogs and all sorts of madness, seemingly on your behalf. Then, they file a Google spam report claiming that it was in fact YOU who was doing the spamming. There's no proof, and because you can potentially be framed, Google won't act on that. HOWEVER, if your website, which is on your server, which you do have control over is doing something bad and someone reports that, then, yea, if Google agrees, you're screwed because it's entirely under your control.

            Google takes a lot of precautions to prevent not only one's own manipulation attempts to boost their site but their competitors attempts to tear it all down.
            Yes. I understand this. However, like I said it has only ever happened to me once and I've built 10+ sites exactly the same way with exactly the same backlinks. The biggest concern I had was that the cache was removed from the search results page. No option to even click it. It went from #1 getting 250 unique visitors per day, to nowhere in the SERPS...and next to it in the SERPS is no option for cache.

            That indicates to me that I received some sort of penalty. It could have been an automated penalty, it could have been a manual review of why my 4 month old pr 0 site was ranking #1 for a keyword that got nearly 10k exact match searches. I don't know what made it drop out of the serps and lose the cache, but I know it happened. And I know it was built on predominantly forum profile links.

            I know people say that backlinks can't hurt you otherwise you could spam your competitors. I use to think exactly the same way. However, I do realize that a brand new site getting nothing but profile backlinks must throw up some red flags. Most of your competitors are established sites and yes you cannot affect their ranking with backlinks. However, I believe you can affect a very young site with tons of similar low quality backlinks.

            So yes, it is impossible to hurt your competitors with backlinks because they are your competitors...meaning they are already established and probably already have some good links. However, I believe that a young site with no quality backlinks to support it can be affected by mass low quality links.

            This is my experience, and I learned tremendously from it. It really set me in pursuit for better backlinks that will last forever. Rather than having to constantly spam backlinks to keep my site ranking.
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            • Profile picture of the author HunterSnake
              Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

              This is my experience, and I learned tremendously from it. It really set me in pursuit for better backlinks that will last forever. Rather than having to constantly spam backlinks to keep my site ranking.
              Absolutely. I agree with you 110%. Don't get me wrong, either. =)

              Nothing substitutes quality backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author ptpatil
    I would actually think itd be the caffiene and mayday updates that screw over MNS sites that are obviously just for commercial purposes
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  • Profile picture of the author MrSaws
    Fresh content & always add more backlinks will let you get back the rankings.
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    Get Your Free Website, No Hidden Fees | SuperFreeWebsite.com
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  • Profile picture of the author CET
    If most of your backlinks were of a certain type, it seems to me that Google probably decided that they previously gave too much value to them and corrected that valuation. If I were Google, I'd give little to no value to forum profile links. If a car salesman vouched for himself, would you take him seriously?
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    • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
      Originally Posted by CET View Post

      If most of your backlinks were of a certain type, it seems to me that Google probably decided that they previously gave too much value to them and corrected that valuation. If I were Google, I'd give little to no value to forum profile links. If a car salesman vouched for himself, would you take him seriously?

      That doesn't explain the cache being unavailable. It's completely absent from the search results. No option to even click it.
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      • Profile picture of the author CET
        Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

        That doesn't explain the cache being unavailable. It's completely absent from the search results. No option to even click it.
        What does the "cached" link have to do with your SERP position? I suspect you're reading into something that has no inherent meaning.

        According to Google's original PageRank patent as well as all of my tests and experience, SERP position is determined mostly by backlinks (quality, quantity, relevance, diversity, and depth). Since you mentioned that your backlink strategy was based almost entirely on forums, and those links are not quality, relevant, diverse or deep; it stands to figure that Google eventually decided to devalue them.

        If you were Google, would you see forum profile links as good indicators to the quality of the website?
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        • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
          Originally Posted by CET View Post

          What does the "cached" link have to do with your SERP position? I suspect you're reading into something that has no inherent meaning.

          According to Google's original PageRank patent as well as all of my tests and experience, SERP position is determined mostly by backlinks (quality, quantity, relevance, diversity, and depth). Since you mentioned that your backlink strategy was based almost entirely on forums, and those links are not quality, relevant, diverse or deep; it stands to figure that Google eventually decided to devalue them.

          If you were Google, would you see forum profile links as good indicators to the quality of the website?
          Like I said, I have gotten away from forum profiles. But it is no coincidence that the same day my site falls out of the SERPs, the cache link disappears from every page which forum profiles were used. And if it is a coincidence then what would have caused a site to lose it's cache?

          And don't say because my backlinks were devalued. There were at least 30 good quality links from pr 4+ home pages. But the other 800 links were forum profiles. The 30 PR 4+ homepage backlinks would be reason enough to keep the website cached.

          You can say it wasn't a penalty, but until I get an explanation as to why google quit caching the site, I'm going to hold firm in my belief that I hit an automated or quality review penalty.
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          • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
            On top of that. None of my other sites built on exactly the same profiles lost any rankings. Same exact profiles down to the URL. So the devaluation thing doesn't work or all of the sites would have dropped out of the rankings.
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