by yukon Banned
9 replies
  • SEO
  • |
A couple of days ago I had one whole category of pages + images drop in Google SERPs (bottom of page #1). They had been ranking really well for months, top 3 SERPs & 4-5 thumbnail images in Google Text SERPs for multiple keywords.

Yesterday I was seriously thinking about making some tweaks to links & on-page text. I decided not to do anything, just left everything alone.

I just checked a few keywords on this category of pages & images, everything bounced right back to it's old SERP positions.

What had me scratching my head was, Google only messed with 1 category of pages/images, my other categories of pages/images never budged in the SERPs. It looks very controlled how it all bounced back to old SERP positions.

Anyways, glad I left everything alone & waited it out.
#dance #google #yukon
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    IMHO, bing/yahoo, and google, have an algo that rotates
    sites in and out. I have never seen it happen much
    on google, but yahoo used to do it like clockwork.
    I had a site that would rise to #1, then over 2 weeks
    go from #1 to nowhere. Then repeat. I stopped
    checking SERPs a while ago so I don't go
    bonkers. I know I still get rises and falls, as I now
    detect it using adsense earnings and traffic.

    I can almost predict when I will get a bounce in
    traffic and earnings on some sites.

    I think if most people realized that search engines
    need to share the wealth, that is with GOOD sites,
    (Like google is hinting at now), they would less
    likely panic and not make drastic changes.

    You can really mess yourself up.

    I always tell people when they ask if they should tweak
    their site to go back up, it could have the opposite
    effect.

    Now I may be giving away secrets here, maybe not. But
    I have noticed that if my sites need a little "nudge," I'll
    make a blog post on blogger, and/or a forum post in
    a related niche. Could be a "fresh" algo working as
    well.

    Like I said, I don't check SERPs much. I track more on
    earnings and adsense views now more than anything.
    But that's because that's my bread and butter and I
    don't really care about any other stat.

    People talk about some consistency BS, but I go after
    huge bounces via linkbait, retweets, etc.

    Rarely do I ever tweak a site now. I tweak the site's
    footprint.

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

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  • Profile picture of the author Yohance j
    I have been going through this exact dance as you call it
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  • Profile picture of the author mrankin
    Yep, there is no doubt that a dance is back on again - leave it 30 days and hope for the best!
    Signature
    http://usaproxies.net - Top quality private USA proxies.
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  • Profile picture of the author momakmak
    DO NOT TWEAK YOUR SITE. I tweaked my site with a whole new template on oct.6 and by the next day all my traffic went to crap. Before then I thought I got lucky and just made it through the last algo change. Im still trying to figure out what I did wrong.

    I put everything back as close as possible as I had it (no I did not back up my site, yes i am an idiot lol) I got a little improvement but nowhere near what it was before.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by momakmak View Post

      DO NOT TWEAK YOUR SITE. I tweaked my site with a whole new template on oct.6 and by the next day all my traffic went to crap. Before then I thought I got lucky and just made it through the last algo change. Im still trying to figure out what I did wrong.

      I put everything back as close as possible as I had it (no I did not back up my site, yes i am an idiot lol) I got a little improvement but nowhere near what it was before.
      Your host should have done a backup. You could have asked to reset the clock.

      You can also use the wayback machine for the raw code.

      That wayback machine saved my butt once, but is really only helpful if you
      don't have too many pages to recreate.

      But if you are using WP, well, the raw code is worthless...another reason
      to hand code sites.

      Paul
      Signature

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

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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        There was a report back a few weeks of Google actually making your site go down in the serps when the algo would normally make it go up just to dissaude people from doing more optimization than they wanted them to and confuse you that you were doing the wrong thing.

        Devious bunch of dudes
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        • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          There was a report back a few weeks of Google actually making your site go down in the serps when the algo would normally make it go up just to dissaude people from doing more optimization than they wanted them to and confuse you that you were doing the wrong thing.

          Devious bunch of dudes
          They've been doing this for months if not years now, their patent for this dates back aaaaages. Mind games.

          OP, same happened with 2 of my sites right around the last Penguin data refresh. Back to #3 now for about 6 keywords (dropped to #9-#11 for about a week).
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      • Profile picture of the author momakmak
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        Your host should have done a backup. You could have asked to reset the clock.

        You can also use the wayback machine for the raw code.

        That wayback machine saved my butt once, but is really only helpful if you
        don't have too many pages to recreate.

        But if you are using WP, well, the raw code is worthless...another reason
        to hand code sites.

        Paul

        It was a blogger site. I dont think there is a way to get it back unless I manually saved a back up.
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  • Profile picture of the author nekwf
    Is this dance often? I've seen my sites went from PR #1 - #5 to like page 30 something. I left those sites alone and moved on to new kw. I wonder if they would go back up.
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