What happen to my ranking on google?

31 replies
  • SEO
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I have several blogs/websites and recently one of them was ranked 1st in its keyword. I was getting strong traffic and all of a sudden over night traffic stopped and i cant find it at all for that keyword on google!
What do you think could have happened? I know it is still indexed on google because i did a "site:domain.com" search and it still pops up but i am not sure what could have happened.
Any ideas?
If something did happen to it temporarily, what is the best approach i should take to get it back on top?
#google #happen #ranking
  • Profile picture of the author MrElectric
    I would start by doing a backlink check to see if there's negative seo at play here. Google has totally FAILED on this issue.

    Hopefully you've kept decent records of backlinks you've placed and should be able to tell if someone is sabotaging your site with spammy backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
      Yes i had that in mind, i am hoping noone (compeitiors) went and did black hat to my site. If they did should i go and manually delete (if possible)?
      or hire someone to do it?
      Originally Posted by MrElectric View Post

      I would start by doing a backlink check to see if there's negative seo at play here. Google has totally FAILED on this issue.

      Hopefully you've kept decent records of backlinks you've placed and should be able to tell if someone is sabotaging your site with spammy backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author artion
    I've seen a competitor page oscillate from mid-page eight to the second or third position on the first page... it happens often...maybe your competitors are using black hat SEO tactics.. it could be a targeted attack against your site... there are many ways they can do it..
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  • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
    Ya i am afraid this is what happened. I am just trying to figure out what i should do from here. Begin to do more seo for it or will it matter?
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    • Profile picture of the author Ravidya
      You need not loose heart completely since, your site is not sandboxed.

      Under normal circumstances I would have said, "Wait for a week, this could be a Google dance".

      But since many sites are displaced due to the algorithm changes, there are three things you must check.

      1) Make sure your site is still in Google's index. => You have done that.

      2) Check to see properly if there is any negative SEO. => If so remove the unnatural backlinks.

      3) Check to see if you site has some duplicate content. I don't mean to say that you had copied someone else's stuff. There are cases where the one who has the content copied from you would have got indexed first and hence yours would be termed duplicate. => In which case try making some changes to the content.

      Importantly, do not orphan this site. Explore; do some tweaks and see how Google reacts. If you get back your good rankings, you will get a very good idea about what Google wants now.

      Keep posted.

      P.S. There is an inexpensive tool (I don't remember the name of the tool right now) that will give you the exact positioning of your site and you can set it to send you a mail everyday. You can monitor your site properly on a daily basis.
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      • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
        Thanks for the break down I really appreciate it.
        What do you think is the best way to find out any unnatural backlinks?
        What do you mean my site is not sandboxed? I have never heard that term.

        Thanks!

        Originally Posted by Ravidya View Post

        You need not loose heart completely since, your site is not sandboxed.

        Under normal circumstances I would have said, "Wait for a week, this could be a Google dance".

        But since many sites are displaced due to the algorithm changes, there are three things you must check.

        1) Make sure your site is still in Google's index. => You have done that.

        2) Check to see properly if there is any negative SEO. => If so remove the unnatural backlinks.

        3) Check to see if you site has some duplicate content. I don't mean to say that you had copied someone else's stuff. There are cases where the one who has the content copied from you would have got indexed first and hence yours would be termed duplicate. => In which case try making some changes to the content.

        Importantly, do not orphan this site. Explore; do some tweaks and see how Google reacts. If you get back your good rankings, you will get a very good idea about what Google wants now.

        Keep posted.
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        • Profile picture of the author Ravidya
          Originally Posted by kylenelson24 View Post

          Thanks for the break down I really appreciate it.
          What do you think is the best way to find out any unnatural backlinks?
          What do you mean my site is not sandboxed? I have never heard that term.

          Thanks!
          To quickly check the backlinks there are a lot of tools online.
          For instance:

          Backlinks Checker Tool - Backlink Watch

          If the number of backlinks are way more than what you had created, then someone else has created them.

          And regarding sandbox put in simple terms, Google Sandbox is an Algorithm which keeps a record of your backlinks and the ways your backlinks are built to you website. Basically, one can contend that this algorithm is devised to track spammy backlinks.

          However, this term is used a bit loosely in discussions to indicate "severe penalty" as a result of building spammy links.

          To get a fair idea just Google it

          what is google sandbox - Google Search

          And you will have to check your content, buddy. Pull out a few contiguous words from your blog, copy and paste in Google search box within quotes to see if there are other sites are having the same content.

          Hope this helps.
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      • Profile picture of the author VHSEOMike
        Originally Posted by Ravidya View Post

        You need not loose heart completely since, your site is not sandboxed.

        Under normal circumstances I would have said, "Wait for a week, this could be a Google dance".

        But since many sites are displaced due to the algorithm changes, there are three things you must check.

        1) Make sure your site is still in Google's index. => You have done that.

        2) Check to see properly if there is any negative SEO. => If so remove the unnatural backlinks.

        3) Check to see if you site has some duplicate content. I don't mean to say that you had copied someone else's stuff. There are cases where the one who has the content copied from you would have got indexed first and hence yours would be termed duplicate. => In which case try making some changes to the content.

        Importantly, do not orphan this site. Explore; do some tweaks and see how Google reacts. If you get back your good rankings, you will get a very good idea about what Google wants now.

        Keep posted.

        P.S. There is an inexpensive tool (I don't remember the name of the tool right now) that will give you the exact positioning of your site and you can set it to send you a mail everyday. You can monitor your site properly on a daily basis.
        Brilliant tips.
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      • Profile picture of the author Charanjit
        Originally Posted by Ravidya View Post

        You need not loose heart completely since, your site is not sandboxed.

        Under normal circumstances I would have said, "Wait for a week, this could be a Google dance".

        But since many sites are displaced due to the algorithm changes, there are three things you must check.

        1) Make sure your site is still in Google's index. => You have done that.

        2) Check to see properly if there is any negative SEO. => If so remove the unnatural backlinks.

        3) Check to see if you site has some duplicate content. I don't mean to say that you had copied someone else's stuff. There are cases where the one who has the content copied from you would have got indexed first and hence yours would be termed duplicate. => In which case try making some changes to the content.

        Importantly, do not orphan this site. Explore; do some tweaks and see how Google reacts. If you get back your good rankings, you will get a very good idea about what Google wants now.

        Keep posted.

        P.S. There is an inexpensive tool (I don't remember the name of the tool right now) that will give you the exact positioning of your site and you can set it to send you a mail everyday. You can monitor your site properly on a daily basis.
        1. Agree
        2. Might be hard to do and it might be better just to spend the time making good back links than trying to get bad ones removed.
        3. Disagree with totally, two reasons snippet sites are actually ranking very well i.e they take a snippet of the original article, write their views on it and back link to the original article. secondly if this was the case then article syndication would not work and ezine would be a huge waste of time. Some warrior's actual make very good money from article syndication.

        You can see how many back links you have be using google webmaster tools, also try using majestic seo (it shows the number of links deleted), the last update (when blog net works were removed triggered a whole lot of unnatural links emails because of the deleted back links.

        I would not send it a reconsideration request, as at the moment its an automated penalty which can be gamed, a Manuel penalty cant. So what to do to get the rankings better.

        Build high quality content and links. Aim for more c-class diversion and a range of pr pages.
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        • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
          Thanks for the input. I have a question though. What do you mean by c-class diversion? I have not heard that term before.

          Originally Posted by Charanjit View Post

          1. Agree
          2. Might be hard to do and it might be better just to spend the time making good back links than trying to get bad ones removed.
          3. Disagree with totally, two reasons snippet sites are actually ranking very well i.e they take a snippet of the original article, write their views on it and back link to the original article. secondly if this was the case then article syndication would not work and ezine would be a huge waste of time. Some warrior's actual make very good money from article syndication.

          You can see how many back links you have be using google webmaster tools, also try using majestic seo (it shows the number of links deleted), the last update (when blog net works were removed triggered a whole lot of unnatural links emails because of the deleted back links.

          I would not send it a reconsideration request, as at the moment its an automated penalty which can be gamed, a Manuel penalty cant. So what to do to get the rankings better.

          Build high quality content and links. Aim for more c-class diversion and a range of pr pages.
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  • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
    Just an update.....
    So i have been doing a lot of research and this is what i have came up with. Google penguin update was in april and my "deranking" just recently happened within a week so i do not think it had to do with the initial updates from google. I had never got an email in webmaster tools from google saying that i have spammy links. I did a search on Open Site Explorer and all my backlinks are what i expected. Nothing spammy at all. I went through my site to see if there were any broken links, misspelling, any content that may have seemed duplicated, got rid of many affiliate links, and did a tune up on it. Now i am going to site and wait to see what happens.

    Any suggestions on maybe doing a google reconsideration request? https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration I am not sure if this will help or hurt it.




    Originally Posted by Ravidya View Post

    P.S. There is an inexpensive tool (I don't remember the name of the tool right now) that will give you the exact positioning of your site and you can set it to send you a mail everyday. You can monitor your site properly on a daily basis.

    Have you thought of that tool yet?
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  • Profile picture of the author scottiek
    I wouldn't do a reconsideration request yet.

    Google has been making TONs of algorithm tweaks the past few months. Give it at least a few weeks to shake out. I've seen sites that lost rankings right after the Penguin update only to get them all back 3 weeks later when they did a refresh.

    Google is always tweaking nowadays, so be careful of overreacting, especially if your backlink profile is pretty clean.
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    • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
      Awesome thanks for the feedback. I think i have probably over reacted a bit. It was just so alarming how much of a drop i had in traffic.
      It is nice to hear that other people have had a jump back in ranking after a few weeks. That is what i am hoping will happen.
      Originally Posted by scottiek View Post

      I wouldn't do a reconsideration request yet.

      Google has been making TONs of algorithm tweaks the past few months. Give it at least a few weeks to shake out. I've seen sites that lost rankings right after the Penguin update only to get them all back 3 weeks later when they did a refresh.

      Google is always tweaking nowadays, so be careful of overreacting, especially if your backlink profile is pretty clean.
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  • Profile picture of the author rockong
    Google dancing indeed...how did you build your backlinks to reach your rankings?

    Could be an indication why
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  • Profile picture of the author RobShambaugh
    If you've been building quality content and backlinks, then you really don't have anything to worry about. Just keep doing the same. My guess is the google dance. I had 2 sites recently that went from page 1 to who-knows-what-page. A couple weeks later, back to page 1. Just keep building quality content and backlinks, and you'll end up back at the top.
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  • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
    I have continued to do genuine legitimate back linking and several different marketing tactics and began to see a little of an increase but nothing near what i have had in the past. I am going to continue to do some SEO and other backlinking. For now I am relying on other types of traffic (social media, articles, youtube, advertising, etc.)
    Thanks for all the help i appreciate it!
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  • Profile picture of the author gskesavan
    It's called the Google dance. When your website reaches the first page of Google it usually dances to other pages before it settles there. When the Google dance starts, this is your best time to actually post quality content to make sure Google loves you. Only then can you actually stick your website on the first page for your keywords.

    If you really want answers to what Google is doing to your website just register at Google Webmasters.
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  • Profile picture of the author nolanjayce5
    Can i know?
    Have u make some changes at your on page, like title tag or keywords or content or try to fix some of the validation error. these might also cause to lose in results, and this why i am saying that it happened with me, one of mine website keywords were ranking on six of the position it reached to the twenty first position what should i do now, i can only suggest if your keywords is ranking on first of the page then don't do any experiment with your site.
    All the best!
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  • Profile picture of the author anirban4u
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    I presume this was due to the Google Update. It is recommended that you just wait and watch for some time to get the exact scenario.
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    • Profile picture of the author nolanjayce5
      Originally Posted by anirban4u View Post

      I presume this was due to the Google Update. It is recommended that you just wait and watch for some time to get the exact scenario.
      yeah u r right but might that so, but if we make genuine links than it won't have that drastic change.
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  • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
    Thanks for the input everyone. I think my traffic is beginning to pick up more but not enough to truly tell if what i am doing is effecting it. I have set up some .edu backlinks and .gov backlinks in addition. Lets see if those help at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author Weblin
    Google is fighting with spammers and blackhaters by constantly tweaking their algorithm, so just wait one week and see if there is a improvement.
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  • Profile picture of the author markhenryblogs
    Check if there is an any irrelevant links or did u do over optimized
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  • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
    My website is back to being ranked even higher than before on several pages and others not quite yet but atleast there is some improvement
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  • Profile picture of the author dukerutherford
    I have been experiencing the same, all of a sudden all my keywords dropped down even though I've been doing quality links and much more on social media.
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  • Profile picture of the author pandaq
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    • Profile picture of the author kylenelson24
      Originally Posted by pandaq View Post

      I'm SEO site dulichthegioi247.com.But I'm newbe. Recently I received my website but after receiving it being relegated to a few keywords. I want to ask how to fix it?and you can teach me step by step on how to fix that website?
      thank you!

      All i did was be careful about the links I was setting up. Most were high pr and .edu and .gov. In addition i set up link wheels on several articles and I diversified my anchor tags
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  • Profile picture of the author greencanal89
    To top it should have quality links pointing on site, onpage optimization .... And many many more tips
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  • Profile picture of the author Jose Princely
    Check whether the Keyword is listed in your website's webmaster account of search queries. Find out its links and examine it.
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