Drop in Google SERPs today

That's google dance.. Don't worry your sites will be on stable rank within few days..

What you're seeing is normal for sites that aren't very old. You indicated they were a few weeks to a few months old so this is normal.

You will see them quickly bottom out (they probably already have) and then they'll slowly start their mark back up.

Assuming you continue to work on them (linking) they will come back albeit much slower than you'd like.

Fluctuating rankings is perfectly normal during any back link campaign, just keep building on what you have already done and they will bounce right back; sometimes within days but generally a week or 2.

The only time you need worry is if your site disapears from the SERP's altogether.

I dont know if it is the google dance... It happened to me aswell today for sites that were holding a stable position for months. I hope they do bounce back ...

80% of my sites increased a bucket load in the SERPs today.

I think it's an update in the Google algorithms.

But I was SMASHED in the SERPs like you guys were 4 months ago for these sites (dropped like 50 to 100 places for most of my sites), so I guess it's something you have to live with. Just keep building links, that's what I do and it comes back.

This happened to my site too.

I was getting 800 visitors per day then Boom! completely vanished altogether!

The site plus all 200 pages are still indexed just been sent to the back of the queue in the serps.

James

Man i really hope that they are doing their update as we speak. I have been waiting for a good while. This could be a great thing, I would not panic

I guess in the mean time we should not panic and just keep working on seo etc.

Don't panic, I used to have a very popular keyword on the first page for half year, and gone for like 3 months and eventually it came back. Just continue to create content and build backlinks, your ranking will come back. If your site is new, then it could be Google dancing.

I believe your rankings will come back. The most important thing you can do is to continue to consistently get links. Also, if your link building is almost identical for a lot of your sites, that may also explain the pattern of rise and fall. Newer sites also tend to be more volatile, but as your site's age and backlinks get older, you will see more stability in you rankings.

Your sites should come back in a few days, its quite normal for new sites to bounce around... The problem comes when your sites have not re-appeared after 2 weeks...

If this happens, then you could have tripped a temporary filter in Google.

A TON of my micro niche domains dropped as well.

I hate to rain on your parade and I do not believe any of the other posters who say you will come back and this is the google dance, an algorithm update etc etc. Its nonsense.

You said that the sites were new (few weeks to a few months) ... well, Google tends to give an initial boost to all new sites when it initially finds them. They eventually settle down to their natural ranking. This is exactly what has happened to your sites. They now rank where they rank. If you want to rank higher you need to keep working on your SEO.

I agree and dont agree... my sites that got dropped are old, as in 1-3 years old... and some are new as in 3-8 months new... i really dont think anyone knows whats going on exactly, i dont think its a google dance.. ive seen it happen and it doesnt happen to a big chunk of sites, i dont think its a new site placement issue either, but i do think it has something to do with micro niche sites, and it has to do with TODAY specifically... everyone who has been affected has this in common and guess what.. it happened today, to all of us.

micro niche and do you own more than 20?

Just confirming what has been said in that I wouldn't worry about it unless it lasts for weeks.

Sites are being added to Google all the time, sites are having SEO activity applied to them, old sites get deleted, old sites get upgraded, Google plays around with its own system etc..... All of these things seperately and together can cause bizarre activity to occur.

Plus I was on the Google message boards and there have been loads of queries about recent activity and non-showing of domains in maps and rankings so something is afoot and will all be alright in the end.....probably.

Well thats great for you cbpayne, your one of the lucky ones, but its obvious that their are many of us going through it and today... I agree pjman, im hoping its some big tinker.

I have recently faced the same situation and its just a google dance alot of changes are happening.

hearme thanks for sharing your experience. That's the consensus.

From what I have pieced together, this has been affecting niche sites since last Friday 10/23 and lasts from 2 to 7 days. It looks like they are checking the quality of lower ranked sites.

On Devil's night (Halloween Eve) for me it hit us ironically.

About two months ago 20 of my micro niche sites got great ranking and their ranking stayed the same for one month and then few sites starts to slip away from first page and then from top 200. Today it got worse. I lost almost all of the rankings for those 20 sites. First I was hoping that the change is due to devaluation of some of the link types I used for the whole sites. Now I see that you guys are also facing the same situation. Lets hope that this algo change will not be permanent.

Now that I have had time analyze it. All of my rankings are exactly 5 spaces back for top words and 10 spaces back for secondary keywords. Very interesting???

Everyone saying that the sites should come back and attributing this to Google dance really have no idea if that is the case. If it was a Google dance, why would it have effected all of his sites?

Doesn't sound like that to me. Sounds like an algorithm change that affected most of your sites or a devaluation of your backlinks.

Are all the backlinks to your portfolio of sites the same? For example, you said you use profiles. Do you have the same profiles supporting the majority of your sites? If so, it could very well be that your backlinks were devalued causing the drop.

This should be taken more seriously than a google dance. Google dances do happen, but not across 28 sites all on the same day. I would learn more towards a devaluation of your backlinks. Especially if you have the same links supporting all of your sites.

Diversify and build more and better links to your sites.

I saw income drop yesterday but figured it was the weekend, then I checked today, low earnings again, so i checked SERPS and a lot of my micro sites are gone...

Don't stress, keep building links!

That's what I did last time when this happened and I lost nearly 50% of my earnings.

Keep getting links to your site.

I'm pretty sure it's not a Google dance. The dance doesn't affect everyone in this way on the same day.

Just checked my Google Anaylitics and I've had a massive drop in the serps for my other sites.

Really hope this is temporary because this is gonna have a serious affect on my income.

James

Massive drop here as well. Gone from page 1 and 2 to page 44 and lower... These are sites several years old.

Evita

I do not think Google is a big fan of micro sites and could well be applying the hammer against them. Just my thought.

Don't worry, a new site indexed by Google against the same keywords often appears at the top initially, but you will quickly regain position as they drop off over the next few days.

I can only assume the google indexing process takes a few days to run to establish where it wants to rank a page.

Peter

I saw an otherwise unexplainable drop in some micro niche sites.

Something is definitely going on, I think Google has done an algorithm update or is testing things.

I've seen some of the same thing with a few sites that are 1-3 years old. Perhaps 25% of my sites. Others in the same age range are unaffected.

guys chill out and read the posts!

Several people in this thread, and a ton of people around the net including Matt Cutts, have said that Google has had some indexing and ranking issues. They are working on a fix.

I hope you will back on your best position next day..

The answer?

Micro niche sites don't last.

Well most don't.

A micro niche could be considered "skin care" or you could take it and target just rosacea. Going deeper is when you run into problems because the site isn't quality enough to compete with the other sites which didn't go so deep and have a pretty big "skin care" site that also has a rosacea section.

There is no issue John Mu has already reported a problem with Google indexing and should be resolved as we speak the full thread below, dont panic your site will come back, Saying that mine dropped from 5-30 places on the 1st October and have not recovered just yet

Google appears to have stopped indexing blogspot.com new post as of 20 Oct - Webmaster Central Help

I noticed something going on with Halloween niche sites and made this post and was pretty much ignored. Basically all the mini niche sites were replaced with vendor sites.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...cfgJkMt6aMOqB4

Have you guys read this post at seomoz?

SEOmoz | Are Exact Match Domains Too Powerful? Is Their Time Limited?

If exact match domains are no longer play its importance in helping us get ranked, how do we survive in the new world? All I know is how to make money off of micro sites with exact match kw...quite sad actually, I was ready to quit my job to go full time, but now this is a major setback. Should we shift our focus on creating bigger authority sites? Any ideas?

Yes, authority is the way to go. The problem is that they take for ever to build and your putting all your eggs in one basket that way until you can build two or three. I knew the domain name thing was on the way out, scammers have been abusing that way too much.

Don't worry about that, just keep doing what you have been doing. sites that aren't aged will move around quite a bit until they find their spot on the search engine.

Webspider I really don't think that is the case....

My site has been ranked for a full year and now most of them went POOF in 2 days
Others are experiencing the same thing. It's time to adapt...
Exact match kw days of easy ranking is gone.

Are there any resources that someone can recommend me to build authority-like sites...need some foundation on how to property build my sites...u can pm your affiliate link...thanks

About half of mine that have had major drops include non-exact keyword domain so not just an exact domain issue.

But on the contrary...there are some people who have seen major boost in ranking of their network of sites. There is one guy here on this thread. I also witnessed this kind of SERP shift back in August when 20 of my sites moved up over night. But it didn't last long. In one month they started to slip away one by one and yesterday they all went away. It may be true that Google is finally changing the game on EMDs but I dont think its over yet. But its a smart move to start building authority sites with a number of keywords.

SMH.

A lot of misinformation in this thread. Micro Niche Sites are far from dead if done right.

Al Mukmin,

So your micro niche sites weren't affected with what's currently going on? If that is the case what did you do "right"?

I had some that weren't affected although the majority were. I have no idea what the difference. Similar markets, site size the same etc but affected differently... That is what I can't work out. Some 20 page of original content also saw massive drops.

For the people that have dropped in ranking from SERPS, were you using Wordpress? Just curious...because I was using wordpress. Trying to see what common factor there could be.

No. My site is straight HTML and Css Static.

Not sure the back link and age thing is true.

My site is 11 years old with over 2 million backlinks, it was hit hard on October 30.

For those that dropped in serps what did u use for backlinking? UAW?

I also found the same problem today! We are all poor man, lol...

I did not built links for about 4 days as I went out for travelling, and some of my paid links were expired one month ago, and I found the google analystic updating cycle is about 1.2 month, so the total links amount drops, and some keyword drops too, so I guess that's the reason. Do you guys think so?

Here is another useful post on SEOBook.com. Great discussion too.

Google Guidelines for Link Building & SEO | SEO Book.com

Hope this help.

Google is just being Google.

Hi

Thought I would share some of my thoughts on this. We manage over 300 websites and most haven't seen any movement, only a few from a clients network of 70 sites. Some have moved up, some stayed the same and some moved from page 1 to page 40, they are all built using php and their design is similar with different keyworded content.

People are saying this is the end of the microsite / keyworded site, but if it was wouldn't all 70 sites been penalized? They are basically all the same. And if Googles aim is to remove spam or bad content for their users why is this site - IVA Squirrel: Wha is an IVA - ranking for this VERY highly competitive keyword IVA - Google - You will see most sites have over 100k links and PR5-6, why would Googles algo change promote a site like that when there are a lot of sites offering great content.

It really doesn't make much sense.

This blog post is interesting which documents whats been happening in the Google Forum - Google Stops Indexing Sites, Rumors of Algorithm Change October 2010 | Tj's Daily® - But it seems to relate more towards indexing, but if there are indexing issues this could randomly effect sites and as we all have a lot of micro sites we notices this, if just 10% of sites are effected we could all have 10-40 sites which are effected each.

Could it be links? Not in my opinion, we use the same links on all sites and only a few lost their rankings, if this was a big demote of a certain linking strategy we would be bleeding to death right now.

To deal with this we are waiting it out to see what happens and see if any patterns emerge. If established sites rank better for long tail then perhaps article marketing will be a more effective affiliate technique or web 2.0 properties.

you r face google dance dont worry jus keep on making quality back links

Pretty sure it is not an algo change. The only thing that makes sense is that Google's indexing machine broke and they're trying to fix it. I had 4 #1 sites and two are still there with one down to #2. These get indexed pretty much daily. The ones that got slammed are indexed less often and I'm reasonably sure that was the problem. I'm also not very confident that they will come back as soon as they are indexed again because it seems some significant ranking damage may have been done after the first miss. Makes me mad because a few more were making steady progress to #1.

I also believe that it's not an algo change.

1) I have sites that are still ranking #1 without keywords in my domain names
2) I have sites that are still ranking in top 10 with keywords in my domain names
3) I have new sites not affected by the 'change'
4) I have old sites not affected by the 'change'

However:
1) I have sites that dropped from first page when I did no SEO at all
2) I have sites that dropped from first page when they are fully optimized
3) I have sites that dropped from first page when I have backlinks nicely distributed to them

To me, it's too random to discover any pattern. So, I don't think it's algo change.

The problem is this.

The Alexa Blog: Has traffic to your site dropped? You're not alone.

Big sites are also affected by this problem.

One my sites just lost all rankings for ALL its keywords. All the pages for this site are now ranking in the 300+ zone, some are not even ranking at all. I certainly hope this is temporary.

Sounds like a lot of adjustment from google. But they did not make it official though. That's really bad.

They usually only make announcements when they have thoroughly tested something and are convinced it works. So I'm guessing they concur with us. That it's still broke.

Wouldn't come as a surprise if Google stars to penalise certain blogs as not serving their keyword, some would say about time

I wouldn't be surprised if the sun came up in the East. But Google's indexing is broken and they are not going to admit it.

Like many members here said this is normal and all your pages should be inexed again soon. Happens to me often.

Mine were all hit morning on 10/30, so I hope there is a pattern here and they come tomorrow.

My sites were hit on 10/28 as well. Interestingly, some of the sites had the index page still ranking but internal pages went to page 40 and beyond. Then a few days later on some of the sites, the index page joined the internal pages. Then other sites have improved some in rankings... And some have not been hit at all...

ECPM is down as well. By about 45%. Now, I haven't done enough checking to see if the loss of the sites who went Bye-Bye also brought down the ECPM.

At the moment I'm not going to fret too much over this. Until I know what I can do to remedy the situation I'll just continue what I was doing.

Sure is a good lesson though.... Gotta Diversify!!

Evita

DAmn all my adsense sites took a big hit in rankings. Sites that I was making good money on 7 days ago are at zero now.

I guess just keep building links and see what happens in a few days huh.

Sprinkling around a few high authority backlinks to those sites should give some push that it badly needs

Yesterday no movement for mine but... This morning one is back in it's original position and a few others are slowly moving up the SERPS. Don't give up hope pjman, I m strarting to feel more confident about it.

I've noticed one or two gradually moving up again

Although there still pages behind where they were before

James

Check my post from yesterday... #100. I said I hope my rankings came back today (8-days exactly of no traffic) like two other people said. Would you guess it! My traffic is back slightly better than ever.

Nigel, thanks for the vote of confidence... It's working. I think it's an 8-10 day indexing issue, not an algorithm shift. Not indexing our sites, but our links.

Lost all rankings for my sites. This week there's some positive movement. But, not yet return to page 1. Hopefully it recovers.

What I went through over the 8 days, where my rankings bombed was not a dance. It was more like a mosh pit! lost 75% of traffic for 8 days and then right back to where I was.

This could be due to google dance or change in algorithm.

Fluctuation is quite normal classification in the links back to the campaign, just keep building on what you did and go up again, sometimes within days, but usually a week or two.

I dropped today from the 2nd place to the 412th place. No idea what to do. I can confirm that this is a new website from 3 months ago.

Several of the members of my site have also asked me about their adsense/cookie cutter sites disappearing or taking a google hit. There were rumours that googles update would target spam sites and it looks like it worked.

The message seems to be you have to do a bit more to convince google its worth other people seeing now.

Almost 3 weeks later, some of my sites are starting to return to their original rankings. I'm not sure if this is because of my freaking out and aggressive backlinking or not...... but they're back! For now...

Good to hear that Pack12. My website still not recovered, however is moving up gradually. Didn't do much backlinking though.

Fluctuating courses are quite normal during a campaign ties in back, just keep building on what youve done, and they bounce right back, sometimes within days, but generally a week or 2