Google: #1 to #34 in 5 hours

42 replies
  • SEO
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I did a magnificient SEO job today, aided by Google, but well, it looked so good because I was looking inside a mirror .. No, I did not go from #34 to #1, it was the other way round.

Cutting a long story short, one of my bigger earning sites, #1 for all its 3 main keywords, has sudddenly shot down to #6, #11 (dancing to #10) and #34 in a span of 5 hours.

While the recent algo change, as Matt Cutts had confirmed, was about content scrapers, this is a genuine site with no scraping, high quality original content and evoking good user response, more than 1,000 uniques per day, and getting me $150 per day on an average (yeah yeah I am bad at converting traffic to purchases, I know that).

So far, this is the only site of mine that faced the heat.

Did Google show some magic on you too of late, in the last 2 weeks?
##34 #google #hours
  • Profile picture of the author MrWonton
    I have an aged site (5 years old) that has been rock solid for the majority of that time. Totally original content, written and photographed by myself.

    Lost 8 places in SERPs yesterday
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  • Yes, there definitely was and still is a lot of stuff going on with the algos. When they release a change it can take several weeks to affect the whole index so sometimes your site seems to be safe when everybody is crying "apocalypse!" but a few weeks later it hits you, too. Anyway so far all kinds of sites have been affected, even 5 year old authority domains with unique content.

    It seems that google is temporarily punishing all kinds of backlinking efforts because competitors that didn't work on their sites for months are holding positions. Check out backlinksforum.com, there is a big discussion going on about this right now.
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  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    What I have observed is sites that are not stable in their url structure tend to get pushed down. If you have developed sections that people are visiting frequently that haven't changed (except the user interaction), that is the best scenario. If you are doing a lot of "SEO" work still rather than attracting people and links more naturally, that can get you pushed down too. There tends to be a temporary "boost" for newer sites as google is getting to know the site, and that expires sometimes, and that is another reason you can get pushed down.
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  • Profile picture of the author btzr
    This doesn't seem good. I have also seen a few of my sites dropped down a few positions but nothing serious so far. Damn Google always experiments with something Anyway, I think there will be no change in the old method (build backlinks as many as you can) so we just have to get our arses off the ground and start working a big harder.
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  • Profile picture of the author jhonsean
    I think its natural to google search engine. Updating its algorithm will affect the rankings of the sites but then it will back to its original position in SE's
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  • Profile picture of the author aidanjb1
    Hey guys, I didn't see this happen on any of my sites but will go back and check again. I got hit a little bit with the Caffeine update but so far this one hasnt hurt me.

    Building a few links might see you bounce back into the top 10...
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  • There is no such thing as a #1 result. Google will return different results to different people based on the EXACT SAME SEARCH TEXT.

    Turns out they are interested in returning the most relevant data set. And this is based on a whole lot more than just the search phrase.
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    • Profile picture of the author db8
      The algo changes can be quite brutal - I went from #1 to #172 in a matter of hours!

      However, on the flip side, I moved from #78 to #1 for another valuable keyword. :p
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      • Profile picture of the author bleuken
        Yes Google's change algo change made those happened. I myself experience the drastic drop and rise. They're just making the search engine results unpredictable. I just don't know how would Google determine the duplicate contents - which is the original and which is the duplicate.
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        • Profile picture of the author FredJones
          This time they are calling it content scraping.

          My site is also 2 years old (almost) now, all original content, static site but GA sees an average page visit time as around 3 minutes (decent enough I guess), and so on.

          Really, sometimes you feel like saying, "Come on Google, are you claiming that you were so pathetic yesterday that you did not know this site was worse than 33 other sites and you still used to think it was the best?"

          Well, something done is done. Life's tough.
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    • Profile picture of the author suemax
      Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ View Post

      There is no such thing as a #1 result. Google will return different results to different people based on the EXACT SAME SEARCH TEXT.

      Turns out they are interested in returning the most relevant data set. And this is based on a whole lot more than just the search phrase.
      We proved this by all looking at Google at the same keywords at the same time in a classroom. Positions varying between number 1 and number 12!
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      • Profile picture of the author FredJones
        Originally Posted by suemax View Post

        We proved this by all looking at Google at the same keywords at the same time in a classroom. Positions varying between number 1 and number 12!
        Very true, but then, I was talking about my target market's (USA: Google.com) rank here. Also, in my case, this page was strong enough to be the top (#1) across multiple countries (google.CC). Also, even inside Google.com as viewed from ultiple countries the ranks differ, I could check this from 3 countries (1 from India where I reside, and 2 more using proxies) - I was ranked #1 in 2 of these 3 countries even from Google.com. I didn't need to know this but I had checked once just out of curiosity. But in principle I know what you are saying is true.
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        • Profile picture of the author FredJones
          Originally Posted by rcritchett View Post

          Interesting replies, interesting post.

          Yea.. this is net wide my friend! I know people getting torched right now (but they're not engaging in best practices).

          Do you know where all of your links are coming from and are ANY of them from bad link neighborhoods?

          That's getting people zapped right now.

          Like someone else said, they're focusing a lot on the freshness factor.

          They caught some serious heat from some authority websites on the internet for spam and robot generated content sites ranking higher then them.

          Cutts and his boys took action (they've been working on this for a while actually) and people are starting to see the real time outcomes from this.

          Ultimately, who knows, I don't know your site but if you've been legit up until now, you should be ok. It can't hurt to add more freshness, update some content and add more value!
          Insightful post. I have been 100% legit. But the only catch is that Google's new algo seems to be more of a weightage factor based upon how clean they think I am, so one always runs the risk of "false positives" (wrong impression, which is very common in Computer Science algorithms). So far looks like I have been unlucky because if you are a false positive in this kind of a scenario then you are not doing anything wrong but are sheerly unlucky.

          Originally Posted by Bragah View Post

          Thanks friend !
          You have to be patient if you wish to win this game ^^ I learned on hard way but it`s better that i got an answer to this problem ...
          If i may, an offtopic advice : In the end, SEO its all about making case studies because in this domain, its not something you can learn from ebooks ... A method that works today might get you sandboxed in a couple of months.

          Lay low for a while, get involved in other activities and if you don`t get back to your old SERP positions, then thing from the other perspective ^^


          I wish you good luck !
          Thanks, very good thought. I shall probably keep building links at the regular pace and may not change the content for a week at least. In the meantime, the keyword down at #34 has now gone further down to #40. Its plummeting.

          Originally Posted by TomBuck View Post

          Happened to my site recently too, I went from 3rd and 4th for a keyword to page 2, after doing some aggressive seo. It is soo annoying!

          Update from me:

          4th and 6th now..... Don't really know what is going on...
          Is you sitte a new one? If so then it may be a dance.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Well, build more back links then.

    I don't know why you are checking your rank that often?
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    • Profile picture of the author FredJones
      Look, I don't know whetheer you meant what you said literally. But the moment you suddenly find nothing to have sold for something that keeps selling all the time, what do you do? My natural instinct says, "Go and find what's going wrong". It could have been that my site is down as well, now don't ask me whether I need to know whether my site is down or not


      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      Well, build more back links then.

      I don't know why you are checking your rank that often?
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    • Profile picture of the author remodeler
      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      Well, build more back links then.

      I don't know why you are checking your rank that often?
      The guy gets his sites hammered and is losing $150 a day in a split second and you come on here and tell him to just build more links and quit checking his ranking? Unbelievable.
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      • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
        Originally Posted by remodeler View Post

        The guy gets his sites hammered and is losing $150 a day in a split second and you come on here and tell him to just build more links and quit checking his ranking? Unbelievable.
        Wow, I think you need to go back to perezhilton.com and see if anyone has a tampon for you to borrow.

        I don't know why you're coming at me like that, when my suggestion is a very real and honest suggestion. What do you suggest? Just wait and do nothing?

        First of all, if a site is losing rank, it happens. Everyone will experience it, and when they do, they should do more! Why not?

        Why check your ranking multiple times a day? It won't do any good, you shouldn't check it more than once or twice a week, let alone multiple times a day, that just isn't good.

        So instead of being a.... insert 4 letter word here....think before you post. It could be a very temporary thing relevant to only him. I'm sure you realize that search results are based on what is relative to you! Its possible he was never ranked #1 to begin with, he could have searched for his site, and clicked enough times under a keyword so it shows up for HIS results, not everyone elses.

        It is google... so what? This stuff happens. BUILD MORE LINKS! DO MORE THINGS! Is that bad advice? If you think so, what is your niche? I'd love to get into that kind of competition.
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        • Profile picture of the author Ian Varnava
          Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

          Wow, I think you need to go back to perezhilton.com and see if anyone has a tampon for you to borrow.

          I don't know why you're coming at me like that, when my suggestion is a very real and honest suggestion. What do you suggest? Just wait and do nothing?

          First of all, if a site is losing rank, it happens. Everyone will experience it, and when they do, they should do more! Why not?

          Why check your ranking multiple times a day? It won't do any good, you shouldn't check it more than once or twice a week, let alone multiple times a day, that just isn't good.

          So instead of being a.... insert 4 letter word here....think before you post. It could be a very temporary thing relevant to only him. I'm sure you realize that search results are based on what is relative to you! Its possible he was never ranked #1 to begin with, he could have searched for his site, and clicked enough times under a keyword so it shows up for HIS results, not everyone elses.

          It is google... so what? This stuff happens. BUILD MORE LINKS! DO MORE THINGS! Is that bad advice? If you think so, what is your niche? I'd love to get into that kind of competition.
          Maybe you don't have experience with running sites which get 1k+ uniques a day (maybe you do, I am not making a judgement, just saying). But if you had a site which gets 1k+ uniques a day, and if you monitored (or had someone monitor) your stats and everything daily as you should if you're serving 30,000+ visitors per month... and all of the sudden you stopped seeing visitors, no one coming from search engines, your instinct would be to go search for your keywords and see if everything is kosher.

          This is what's happened with the OP and that's how he found out he dropped from 1 to 34 in a matter of 5 hours. Doesn't seem to me that he is 'obsessed' with checking his rankings every 10 minutes, he just happened to end up in a situation where he saw them drop right before his eyes so he kept checking.

          Build more backlinks? I'm sure he will do that, but some of us like to dissect these situations to try and figure out the facts behind it, just to satisfy our curiosity and increase our knowledge & experience... at least I do.
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          • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
            Originally Posted by Ian Varnava View Post


            Build more backlinks? I'm sure he will do that, but some of us like to dissect these situations to try and figure out the facts behind it, just to satisfy our curiosity and increase our knowledge & experience... at least I do.
            Yes, and I agree with that completely... but the OP answered his own question.

            It could have been that my site is down as well
            That is the reason his site is down to #34. Getting high traffic, then the site is down, I would bet that google comes by often. Am I right fred? Google doesn't like going to a site and not getting to eat some content. That is where the problem is, and I'm sure it will be fixed shortly.
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            • Profile picture of the author FredJones
              Wish you were but unfortunately you're not. If you still didn't realize, I'm talking about this: Algorithm change launched

              This is what hit me, but unfortunately it got me completely wrong. This is a original content close-to-2-year-old site that has been doing very well, roping in 4-5K per month in profits.

              I have read about the new algo hitting bad false positives and unfortunately my site is one more false positive in the new Google algo rollout.

              EDIT: Further, I didn't mean my site is down. Its not down, its running perfectly well and it was always running perfectly well. I meant, I am suddenly seeing no sales, so what do I do? I naturally come back and see what's wrong. I had meant, the "wrong" could have as well been that my site was down (it was not down), just that in this case it proved that the Google SERP rank of the site plummeted, and the main source of traffic for this site was Google. And SEO? It was the only commercial site ranked in this space above a .gov, a Wikipedia and 2 trusted medical sites (this was in the health umbrella) - all other commercial sites were below these all and I was above these all for a long time. You face Google dance with the new sites, not after almost 2 years with your old sites that are beating everyone else on mainstream primary 2-word keywords.

              Man, I did know SEO well enough to beat most people hands down till yesterday, but today apparently I don't. Or do I? My other top sites didn't lose rank so its probably not my backlink techniques. It is probably that Google thought this site is copied, so it goes back to what I had started this post with - read the link I have given to Matt Cutts' blog in this post.

              Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post


              That is the reason his site is down to #34. Getting high traffic, then the site is down, I would bet that google comes by often. Am I right fred? Google doesn't like going to a site and not getting to eat some content. That is where the problem is, and I'm sure it will be fixed shortly.
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              • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
                Originally Posted by FredJones View Post

                Wish you were but unfortunately you're not. If you still didn't realize, I'm talking about this: Algorithm change launched

                This is what hit me, but unfortunately it got me completely wrong. This is a original content close-to-2-year-old site that has been doing very well, roping in 4-5K per month in profits.

                I have read about the new algo hitting bad false positives and unfortunately my site is one more false positive in the new Google algo rollout.

                EDIT: Further, I didn't mean my site is down. Its not down, its running perfectly well and it was always running perfectly well. I meant, I am suddenly seeing no sales, so what do I do? I naturally come back and see what's wrong. I had meant, the "wrong" could have as well been that my site was down (it was not down), just that in this case it proved that the Google SERP rank of the site plummeted, and the main source of traffic for this site was Google. And SEO? It was the only commercial site ranked in this space above a .gov, a Wikipedia and 2 trusted medical sites (this was in the health umbrella) - all other commercial sites were below these all and I was above these all for a long time. You face Google dance with the new sites, not after almost 2 years with your old sites that are beating everyone else on mainstream primary 2-word keywords.

                Man, I did know SEO well enough to beat most people hands down till yesterday, but today apparently I don't. Or do I? My other top sites didn't lose rank so its probably not my backlink techniques. It is probably that Google thought this site is copied, so it goes back to what I had started this post with - read the link I have given to Matt Cutts' blog in this post.
                People become paranoid after all changes are announced. I really don't think you have too much to worry about, but maybe you do. Can you pm me your site with the keywords you're going for? Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will help.

                How often do you check your rank every day?

                I have noticed when I would check rank, multiple times a day, it could change a few spots multiple times an hour. I think it is just a very temporary thing and you will be okay.
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          • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
            Originally Posted by Ian Varnava View Post

            Maybe you don't have experience with running sites which get 1k+ uniques a day (maybe you do, I am not making a judgement, just saying). But if you had a site which gets 1k+ uniques a day, and if you monitored (or had someone monitor) your stats and everything daily as you should if you're serving 30,000+ visitors per month... and all of the sudden you stopped seeing visitors, no one coming from search engines, your instinct would be to go search for your keywords and see if everything is kosher.

            This is what's happened with the OP and that's how he found out he dropped from 1 to 34 in a matter of 5 hours. Doesn't seem to me that he is 'obsessed' with checking his rankings every 10 minutes, he just happened to end up in a situation where he saw them drop right before his eyes so he kept checking.

            Build more backlinks? I'm sure he will do that, but some of us like to dissect these situations to try and figure out the facts behind it, just to satisfy our curiosity and increase our knowledge & experience... at least I do.

            Sounds like they are relying more on new traffic than repeat traffic, which makes me think the content isn't all that good or original. I do get around 1000 unique visitors a day, but only 23% are new visitors, so even if I dropped in ranking, it wouldn't destroy my traffic, although it would hurt a bit. The other guy was just offering advice. No one knows for show why he dropped. Peoples suspect it is a change in google's algorithm, but what changed? What are they looking for now? No one really knows. Try not to be so quick to jump on someone offering advice, even it isn't advice you agree with.
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            • Profile picture of the author FredJones
              Originally Posted by Nigel C. View Post

              Same case. I have a site that makes $50 - $100 a day got hit and ranking went from #2 to #400 across 4 different keywords.

              OP: Is your site running on WP? Did you use any sort of plugins that generate privacy policy page?
              No, it does not run Wordpress. It literally runs hand-coded PHP files and the hand-coding was done personally by me.

              Originally Posted by Derek S View Post

              As for the OP...

              Don't worry about it! If you have had a steady ranking for some time (6 months+) i'm sure it will return to the top of page 1 in 6 weeks or less... happens to everyone and is googles way or testing their algo... In this time continue to build links to your main page, build new pages and do some deep linking to them as well.
              I shall definitely continue to build links, thanks. And also I am seriously thinking of changing the page content. It had been done with many months of effort and tweaking for better results and finally was stable in terms of content for the last 3 months (the ranking had been stable for longer). I already have deep linking and the deep linked pages had up to #1 rankings for smaller keywords (and lesser rankings also, and many no-ranks also, quite expectedly). It's reduced to a nothing for the time being.

              Originally Posted by aygabtu View Post

              Sounds like they are relying more on new traffic than repeat traffic, which makes me think the content isn't all that good or original. I do get around 1000 unique visitors a day, but only 23% are new visitors, so even if I dropped in ranking, it wouldn't destroy my traffic, although it would hurt a bit. The other guy was just offering advice. No one knows for show why he dropped. Peoples suspect it is a change in google's algorithm, but what changed? What are they looking for now? No one really knows. Try not to be so quick to jump on someone offering advice, even it isn't advice you agree with.
              You are right about relying upon the new traffic. But look, in my case the repeat traffic is expected to be lesser since it addresses a certain health issue and its cure. People would pretty much check my content, buy if want to and go get cured, or else simply absorb the reasonable free information I give in the site and use it. They would get cured and mostly never need to come back. And then I have a mailing list there too, which used to have a decent sign up rate. I do have other sites in which I get a lot of repeat traffic but not on this one simply because not every site needs to be of a type that focuses on a repeat traffic. You would come back, for example, a thousand times in Warrior Forum and it would be horrible if this site could not maintain repeat traffic. But that does not need to be the case with every site. So I respectfully disagree about the quality of the traffic just because it was not repeat traffic. Bad analogy, but how many times do you think one would go to Wikipedia to check the year of death of their favorite old-time classic author? Never, unless one had a bad memory. But I'm pretty sure that the page on Wikipedia about the author would be darn good. I hope you see what I'm getting at.
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        • Profile picture of the author Derek S
          Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

          Wow, I think you need to go back to perezhilton.com and see if anyone has a tampon for you to borrow.

          I don't know why you're coming at me like that, when my suggestion is a very real and honest suggestion. What do you suggest? Just wait and do nothing?

          First of all, if a site is losing rank, it happens. Everyone will experience it, and when they do, they should do more! Why not?

          Why check your ranking multiple times a day? It won't do any good, you shouldn't check it more than once or twice a week, let alone multiple times a day, that just isn't good.

          So instead of being a.... insert 4 letter word here....think before you post. It could be a very temporary thing relevant to only him. I'm sure you realize that search results are based on what is relative to you! Its possible he was never ranked #1 to begin with, he could have searched for his site, and clicked enough times under a keyword so it shows up for HIS results, not everyone elses.

          It is google... so what? This stuff happens. BUILD MORE LINKS! DO MORE THINGS! Is that bad advice? If you think so, what is your niche? I'd love to get into that kind of competition.
          Spoken like someone who has never had a top ranking for a competitive term LOL

          When you rank number one for a keyword that brings in 80% of traffic and revenue, you check that sucker breakfast, lunch, dinner and even on your phone in the middle of the night when you get up to pee

          To each their own mate and pressing your personal opinions on others isnt a great way to go... you lose credibility. I would never work with/hire someone who openly talks with that tone on a public forum.

          As for the OP...

          Don't worry about it! If you have had a steady ranking for some time (6 months+) i'm sure it will return to the top of page 1 in 6 weeks or less... happens to everyone and is googles way or testing their algo... In this time continue to build links to your main page, build new pages and do some deep linking to them as well.
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          • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
            Originally Posted by Derek S View Post

            Spoken like someone who has never had a top ranking for a competitive term LOL

            When you rank number one for a keyword that brings in 80% of traffic and revenue, you check that sucker breakfast, lunch, dinner and even on your phone in the middle of the night when you get up to pee

            To each their own mate and pressing your personal opinions on others isnt a great way to go... you and lose credibility, I would never work with/hire someone who openly talks with that tone on a public forum.
            I have many sites ranked... some highly competitive, some that basically have no competition. I do this for a living, and no, I don't check rank more than once a week for any site. I'm busy with a lot of different projects, and to be honest, I learned my lesson from only having one source of income, so it would just be a minor inconvenience.

            I don't understand what the big deal is that I said build more links? 99% of the posts on here asking why they went down in rank or why they keep fluctuating can be solved by building more links, doing more work.

            I misunderstood the OP and thought he meant that his site was down, as in not there, server timing out.

            As for my attitude, plenty of people have hired me, I get things done and have a good reputation for that. I give results. I have other people to take care of customer service and sales thankfully. Regardless, that is no issue, if you reread the thread, I gave an honest suggestion and now people are attempting to flame me for that? Yeah, okay... have fun.
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          • Profile picture of the author howinfo
            Originally Posted by Derek S View Post

            Spoken like someone who has never had a top ranking for a competitive term LOL

            When you rank number one for a keyword that brings in 80% of traffic and revenue, you check that sucker breakfast, lunch, dinner and even on your phone in the middle of the night when you get up to pee
            I can totally relate to that what you have said, I am checking rankings many times a day and when the drop happened to me earlier in this January then I spend few day trying to figure out what happened and why.

            As my site is article directory then the content is 99.9% not unique so I did kind of expected something to happened but it is still not nice feeling when it happens and you do check and double check your rankings and keywords and so on. So it has been over a month now and traffic and rankings are returning slowly but surely so I am almost back to the level I was before the drop.
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        • Profile picture of the author remodeler
          Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

          Wow, I think you need to go back to perezhilton.com and see if anyone has a tampon for you to borrow.

          I don't know why you're coming at me like that, when my suggestion is a very real and honest suggestion. What do you suggest? Just wait and do nothing?

          First of all, if a site is losing rank, it happens. Everyone will experience it, and when they do, they should do more! Why not?

          Why check your ranking multiple times a day? It won't do any good, you shouldn't check it more than once or twice a week, let alone multiple times a day, that just isn't good.

          So instead of being a.... insert 4 letter word here....think before you post. It could be a very temporary thing relevant to only him. I'm sure you realize that search results are based on what is relative to you! Its possible he was never ranked #1 to begin with, he could have searched for his site, and clicked enough times under a keyword so it shows up for HIS results, not everyone elses.

          It is google... so what? This stuff happens. BUILD MORE LINKS! DO MORE THINGS! Is that bad advice? If you think so, what is your niche? I'd love to get into that kind of competition.
          You're quite a guy (or gal). Thank you for your expert advice, not to mention the kindness and support to all in this thread. This forum needs more members like you. I wish you the best of success.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ian Varnava
    Originally Posted by FredJones View Post

    I did a magnificient SEO job today, aided by Google, but well, it looked so good because I was looking inside a mirror .. No, I did not go from #34 to #1, it was the other way round.

    Cutting a long story short, one of my bigger earning sites, #1 for all its 3 main keywords, has sudddenly shot down to #6, #11 (dancing to #10) and #34 in a span of 5 hours.

    While the recent algo change, as Matt Cutts had confirmed, was about content scrapers, this is a genuine site with no scraping, high quality original content and evoking good user response, more than 1,000 uniques per day, and getting me $150 per day on an average (yeah yeah I am bad at converting traffic to purchases, I know that).

    So far, this is the only site of mine that faced the heat.

    Did Google show some magic on you too of late, in the last 2 weeks?
    Sorry to hear that.

    It may just be a temporary thing, some of my sites have been jumping all over the place as well. Give it a few days and let's hope you go back to your original spots.

    Also, it may be a bit early since it's only been 5 hours, but have you tried to do any research as to trying to find out a reason (if there is one) for the sudden drop from 1 to 34? Maybe you somehow lost some of your high-juice links, maybe Google bot came to visit you a couple of times and your server was down, maybe something wrong with your robots.txt file... stuff like that.
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  • Profile picture of the author chrisadams008
    Well, maybe Google did not like you keywords anymore
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  • Profile picture of the author Nigel C.
    Same case. I have a site that makes $50 - $100 a day got hit and ranking went from #2 to #400 across 4 different keywords.

    OP: Is your site running on WP? Did you use any sort of plugins that generate privacy policy page?
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    • Profile picture of the author MrWonton
      Originally Posted by Nigel C. View Post

      Same case. I have a site that makes $50 - $100 a day got hit and ranking went from #2 to #400 across 4 different keywords.

      OP: Is your site running on WP? Did you use any sort of plugins that generate privacy policy page?
      I have a somewhat generic privacy page. You reckon it hurts the site?
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  • Profile picture of the author AdamPeterson
    If Google dropped your site to # 34 - I am sure your site is under penalty. Consider what changes you had done to the site recently, before thinking about recent algo change in Google? If there are anything, you can work on fixing those things rather than assuming that is because of Google algo change,
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    • Profile picture of the author HostStage
      When such things as Algo changes occurs, its better to lay low for a while and try to understand what happened when you get back on a stable position ...
      Don`t try to understand this changes without knowing the final results...
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      • Profile picture of the author FredJones
        Originally Posted by FredJones View Post


        I shall definitely continue to build links, thanks. And also I am seriously thinking of changing the page content. It had been done with many months of effort and tweaking for better results and finally was stable in terms of content for the last 3 months (the ranking had been stable for longer).
        Originally Posted by AdamPeterson View Post

        If Google dropped your site to # 34 - I am sure your site is under penalty. Consider what changes you had done to the site recently, before thinking about recent algo change in Google? If there are anything, you can work on fixing those things rather than assuming that is because of Google algo change,
        Adam great suggestion but if you look at my post quoted above you shall realize, I had made no change to this page content at all in the last 3 months, and it had stuck solid at #1 delivering 1-1.2k uniques per day. Plus, this is not a blog so no question of content change because of people commenting.

        Originally Posted by Bragah View Post

        When such things as Algo changes occurs, its better to lay low for a while and try to understand what happened when you get back on a stable position ...
        Don`t try to understand this changes without knowing the final results...
        Awesome suggestion. In a way, this is exactly what is still keeping me from changing the content although I am in two minds still. A very solid and sensible suggestion if I may say so.
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        • Profile picture of the author HostStage
          Originally Posted by FredJones View Post

          Awesome suggestion. In a way, this is exactly what is still keeping me from changing the content although I am in two minds still. A very solid and sensible suggestion if I may say so.
          Thanks friend !
          You have to be patient if you wish to win this game ^^ I learned on hard way but it`s better that i got an answer to this problem ...
          If i may, an offtopic advice : In the end, SEO its all about making case studies because in this domain, its not something you can learn from ebooks ... A method that works today might get you sandboxed in a couple of months.

          Lay low for a while, get involved in other activities and if you don`t get back to your old SERP positions, then thing from the other perspective ^^


          I wish you good luck !
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  • Profile picture of the author TomBuck
    Happened to my site recently too, I went from 3rd and 4th for a keyword to page 2, after doing some aggressive seo. It is soo annoying!

    Update from me:

    4th and 6th now..... Don't really know what is going on...
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  • Profile picture of the author rcritchett
    Interesting replies, interesting post.

    Yea.. this is net wide my friend! I know people getting torched right now (but they're not engaging in best practices).

    Do you know where all of your links are coming from and are ANY of them from bad link neighborhoods?

    That's getting people zapped right now.

    Like someone else said, they're focusing a lot on the freshness factor.

    They caught some serious heat from some authority websites on the internet for spam and robot generated content sites ranking higher then them.

    Cutts and his boys took action (they've been working on this for a while actually) and people are starting to see the real time outcomes from this.

    Ultimately, who knows, I don't know your site but if you've been legit up until now, you should be ok. It can't hurt to add more freshness, update some content and add more value!
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanjm
    ^this has affected a lot of people. In another forum there is a 100+ post thread on this topic and no one has really been able to narrow it down much except for this: on-page content does not seem to matter, rather, it appears to have something to do with the age of the site and how aggressive you've been with link-building.

    For example, I have a few new EMDs that only received a handful of a BMR type links, and they did nothing but move up. However, almost every other site I had with a wide range of link-types and more aggressive link-building saw drops of 3-8 spots (all were 1st or 2nd page) simultaneously. So if I had to gamble on the cause of the drop and how the algo is identifying sites that are manipulating their rankings, I would say it is link volume and domain age tied together.

    Still, this is just a semi-educated guess at this point because even after dozens of people chiming in on the other forum it couldn't be figured out just yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author hilhilginger
    This has been very common with google. Noobs get their page at first place initially and nosedive after a couple of days. Only constant quality back links would keep you top in any self triggered site analytics.
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    • Profile picture of the author Martin N Smith
      Insightful post guys (and gals).

      I have about 15 sites, ALL of which post up between 7 and 14 unique articles / blogs a week. I try to diversify the link building where possible.

      The only site to be affected (from what I can tell) was a .co domain (less than a year old). It went from page 24 to page 5 - stuck there for about 48 hours and then reverted back to page 17. And before someone pipes up with 'Google Dance' - I don't think this was anything to do with backlinks, more a temporary blip as the algo updated.

      I hope those affected get their rankings back soon. The only suggestion I can provide is to perhaps consider cranking up your new content 'volume'. Or to put that another way, consider introducing a news category on your blogs / sites and post up something fresh once a week.

      Cheers
      Martin
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      • Profile picture of the author FredJones
        To add insult to injury (and yes I'm still injured with no sign of recovery), the site that is #1 now for <main keyword> natural treatment, in which I used to be #1 and is dancing between #30 and #40 now, has some wonderful content.

        What's the content?

        Error 404 - Page not found!

        The page you trying to reach does not exist, or has been moved. Please use the menus or the search box to find what you are looking for.
        Can we call Google incredible?
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  • Profile picture of the author pullman
    My 3 month old site dropped from #9 to #140 and its ranking completely irrelevant pages of my site on my target keywords..

    Dont know if i got sand boxed with the new changes of what... i kept on adding content for weeks now but all in vain

    Have you had a luck on you site?
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