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1000's of Keywords Gone From Page 1 now down to Page 6
Big SERPs Drop - May be becasue we have 2 different themes on same domain
aok88




msg:3527871		 4:38 pm on Dec 14, 2007 (gmt 0)

I ahve seen a few other threads here that have been related to this but not quite the same.

I ahve a PR 5 site that has two separate and distinct themes. Both themes used to rank unbelievably well in Google, now only one of the two themes does, ever since Dec 4th.

Our site has 9000 pages when I do a site:www.example.com and site:example.com and it was not de-indexed by Google since this happened.

Has this happened to others?
Is this a big Update?

------------- Details ----------

(I don't know if our bid drop in the SERPs is realted to tthe fact that we have 2 different thmese, but if so, here are the details:

Theme 1: is anout widgets and I have a lot of backlinks that are widgets-realted and the homepage is totally about widgets. It has about 100 pages dedicated to this theme.

Theme 2: is about foobars and I have far less backlinks that have the foobars theme. However, I have about 8500 pages about the foobars on this domain.

After a week and a half ago, I still rank for highly competitve terms for widgets, but dropped to page 4-7 (depending on total number of results in Google) for hundreds of foobars-related terms, and this stinks.

I need to get the foobars theme to rank again, and I know my site has a lot of power since it ranks #1-3 for widgets terms that yeild millions of reuslts. Any suggestions?

One theory was that on my main homepage (which was exclusively about widgets) I had a footer that contained lots of links to my foobars pages and that since Google discounted paid links (and these looked like paid links since they were not realted at all to the widgets theme) so that the power of my PR 5 homepage no longer passed to the foobars pages.

I added some foobars links embedded in the main content of the homepage to see of those pages would rank and they did not. Now I have melded the two themese together on the homeapge (quite hard since they're not related) and am waiting to see how Google reacts when it indexes the new version.

Questions:

* Does anyone know how Google treats 2 different themes?
* Has that changed recently?
* Is this an on-page factor that I can change (like melding the two topics together on the homepage) or is it exclusively an off-page thing where I need to change my backlinks profile?
* Would a 301 redirect from the homepage to an inner foobars homepage work?
* Does this sound like we got hit by a manual penalty? And if so, what should I do next?

 

bwnbwn




msg:3528117		 9:15 pm on Dec 14, 2007 (gmt 0)

Q * Does anyone know how Google treats 2 different themes?
A No different than defore

Q* Has that changed recently?
A Nothing really

Q* Is this an on-page factor that I can change (like melding the two topics together on the homepage) or is it exclusively an off-page thing where I need to change my backlinks profile?

A I would put them together and not act like the site is two different sites. Looks like Google picked the one you have on the front page title. It is always a wise thing to do to keep the anchor text changing

Q * Would a 301 redirect from the homepage to an inner foobars homepage work?

A No unless you want to do away with that part of the site.

Q* Does this sound like we got hit by a manual penalty? And if so, what should I do next?

A maybe the links in the footer most likely look like spam. This can be frowned on by a review and or algo.

Best advice clean the site up get rid of the footer links change the Title on the home page, seems to me 8000 pages verses 100 pages is the main one I would go after but you can put them both in the Title tag.

Wait be paitent

aok88




msg:3528175		 10:56 pm on Dec 14, 2007 (gmt 0)

bwnbwn -

thanks - I appreciate the advice. Think It'll come back if I do what you suggest?

nuevojefe




msg:3528299		 2:38 am on Dec 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

Do your footer links all contain the same foobar keyword (or do a lot of them)?
aok88




msg:3528706		 11:46 pm on Dec 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

Here's the problem in a nutshell:

1. I have an aged site with strong PR and many incoming links.
2. The home page is about A, but there are also many text links in the footer that are about B.
3. Until Dec 4, any new page I added and linked to from the home page---whether it was about A or B---got ranked in top 10 within days. In fact, any pages I created that were about A or B got ranked great (Page 1 results) even if they weren't linked to from the homepage.
4. After Dec 4, the only new pages that I can get ranked high are about A.
5. If the newly added pages are about B, they get ranked in position 60-70.
6. Linking to the new page about B from footer or from the main body makes no difference. And I now changed the homepage to be a good combination of A and B and that has not made any affect on my B rankings.
7. Assumption: Google began discounting any B-themed links.

8. Problem: B-theme is the main source of my income from this site.
9. Question: How do you convince Google to start counting B-themed links again?

nuevojefe




msg:3529034		 7:23 pm on Dec 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

How does the inbound link profile look? What's the ratio of inbound links to theme A pages vs theme B pages; and the anchor text ratio for the same?

Are theme B's pages within a single directory by any chance?

aok88




msg:3529048		 8:34 pm on Dec 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

How does the inbound link profile look? What's the ratio of inbound links to theme A pages vs theme B pages; and the anchor text ratio for the same?

About 8:1 for A:B (at least this is the case for anchor text, not total number of inbound links)

Are theme B's pages within a single directory by any chance?

Interesting question. The answer is 'yes', why do you ask? But could that make that much of a difference? (and there are about 15 theme A directories all at the same level as the 1 and only theme B directory, and this theme B directory has 95% of the site's pages which have all tanked in Google this week.)

soapystar




msg:3529109		 10:28 pm on Dec 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

search engines themselves use subdomains for different themes...i think this tells us everything we need to know...
aok88




msg:3529119		 11:06 pm on Dec 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

soapystar -

so what exactly are you you saying?

and didn't matt cutts just talk about how they may be now considering subdomains like directories?

JoshN




msg:3529701		 7:35 pm on Dec 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

My site also dropped from top of page 1 to page 4 for top keywords sometime in the last couple of days. We don't have any different themes or anything. Made no significant changes recently. We had duplication in our title/description, we have remedied that now so we'll see if it makes a difference.
rocco




msg:3530016		 5:48 am on Dec 18, 2007 (gmt 0)

I have noticed something very interesting - I have checked for German sites only - on Alexa: 90% of all sites listing a bulk of products like shopping comparison sites, product review sites, etc. have taken a dive since around DEC-10-2007. Anyone else noticing a pattern?
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