New Site Rank Dropped Off Google

it's impossible to tell without knowing your domain. It seems to me that you have been penalized for unnatural link building. If you shoot me a PM with your URL ill take a look if you like

As your website is pretty much new, these fluctuation in ranking is very much expected. You should continue to work on your On and Off site SEO issues like you are doing now.
Also concentrate on building backlinks which looks natural to Google, its equally important for ranking in Google SERP.

Your website is new, so probably it doesn't have high authority and it would be really hard to rank it for anything bigger than normal keywords (take low competition keywords and try to rank for them!)

Google Panda #25 was released in line with the drop you are experiencing. It's possible that your site has been adversely effected by this Algorithm update.

However it could be a coincidental manual link penalty.

The good news is that you're still indexed so you've not been completely slapped out of the game. But I would say that it's VERY unlikely that this is just Google naturally adjusting to your site being new; as you typically wouldn't lose ALL of your rankings if this were the case.

Thanks! I appreciate the input. I was at #13 for the first two weeks. Dropped to #18 the 3rd week and now nowhere going into week #4.

For totally news sites, web 2.0 links and blog comments aren't that "natural". You may have tripped some sort of filter. If it's a new site, then I would tend to do something like a few press releases announcing new products or a new service, then maybe a few totally on-topic links like from other sites in your local area (if it's a local site). Then a few profiles (linkedin, google+, twitter, etc.).

I wouldn't start off building social bookmarks and blog comments to a new site. Just not natural looking to me.

Would I not get a letter through my google webmasters account?

Justin, typically no. You'll only really get a notice in Google Webmaster Tools if they've done something manually.

What you're describing sounds as if you've hit an automated filter, part of the algorithm.

So if it's an automated filter...what is the best approach from here on out? Lay low or continue what I was doing?

The same exact thing happened on my last site. Exactly how you described.

It was a new site (about 2 months old), I was doing web2.0 and blog comments, and noticed my links skyrocket 1 day (they kept going up for 2 weeks untill they reached 3,000 backlinks). Then I noticed that one of my blog comments was displaying in a recent comments widget. And that was the reason why my links kept going higher and higher.

Something was triggered, and my site dissappeared, but did not appear penalized.

When I went back to examine the blog, I noticed that many of the pages my "recent comment" was on, were NOT relevant to my site. I also realized I had the same anchor text a few thousand times. Not to mention, my no-follow link % going through the roof.

The links jumped from like 30 to 300 the first day, then like I said 2 weeks later were up to 3,000. All from this 1 large blog.

Anyway, for a new site, if its a blog comment doing this, its probably a combination of having the same anchor text now for more than half your links, and the fact they are all nofollow.

I had to post on the blog, to get my comment pushed off their recent comment widget, and my ranks came back a week later.

However, I stopped commenting on blogs after that. I just don't trust them for a new site anymore.

Using web2.0 all by itself barely did much. My site still danced for the next 6 months. Ranking were never stable and I was even backlinking my web2.0s with more web2.0s and tons of content.

Eventually I realized that web2.0s are wayyy to weak. Unless they are superblogs, that have been aged and backlinked thoroughly, I don't think they will help much at all for ranking.

So I wound up buying up a few .coms, one of them aged, and made my own little network. That boosted my serps by 450 pages in 1 day. My site was doing much better by then.

Then a month later, my ranks plummeted again. The site was still dancing dramatically, and I decided I might know a bit about SEO, but I'm sure as hell no expert.

So I stopped doing SEO permanently, and found a competent guy to outsource to.

That has been the smartest decision I've made as far as SEO goes.

And unless I'm willing to spend $2000-$3000 to build out a large private network, I will never touch SEO again. Its way too much BS to deal with if you're not on top of your game and taking it reaaaallly seriously.

Just my thoughts on SEO.

ps - These are not my thoughts on youtube SEO however. YT is very easy to rank videos and I still do a couple dozen every month.

A one month old site you are active back linking to is probably just dancing.

I would follow these 3 steps,

1. chill out and relax.
2. stop checking your stats, it's bad for your blood pressure.
3. diversify your link building and include social.

Relax, you're probably dancing, if it doesn't come back in several weeks then you may have copped a slap.

Don't get worried too much on these minor fluctuations. Do whatever you are doing to get better in the search engines and you will soon restore your position.

I think this is just normal for a new site. Just continue working on targeted traffic by putting quality content, updating your website often and making sure that your website is easy to navigate. For new site, the link velocity should be taken one step at time or slowly. Build links from different types of authority sites- social bookmarking, wiki, web 2.0s, blogposts, etc. Google can easily see or index those links coming from the sites with higher authority.

New site will have this problem. Since your site has low DA, it will go down in the SERP's. Your site will come into rankings over time. Just keep building quality links and try Guest Posting as well.