Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I looked into it and I cannot find the reason at all. I signed up for google sitemaps but it does not report any errors or faux pas'.
So I don't know where to look now. Any input very much appreciated!
[edited by: engine at 1:33 pm (utc) on July 21, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit] [/edit][/1]
-russ
i lost my page rank from 5 to 4 but its just for index page and other links in my site like domain.com/topsite or domain.com/forum still have there old page rank :(
now im trying to link to some high pagerank site, maybe this will help me to increase pagerank againe!
UPDATE: thanks god, from 69 DC there is just 8 of theme that show PR 4 now :D
[edited by: firefoxin at 4:24 pm (utc) on July 28, 2006]
A site that I lost for only major keywords on June 27th came back a couple weeks ago but now dropped a few search pages in and still has supplemental issues.
Googleguy dropped a hint on reseller's thread earlier about how they can't or won't be able comment on specific datecenters untill maybe the end of the summer.
Believe with Googlebase and now adding the checkout stuff that they
are re-building their whole search and many bugs coming up affecting
many sites. I can't believe how so many news stories that should be in news search only taking over and big players as Amazon and such almost seem hardcoded to stay in. As the Amazon example on June 27th. Then wham their right back in.
Don't see to many changes at all on non competitive keywords, only keywords in the millions.
Yesterday we hit the number one spot, which we knew
was a fluke since the entire index had re-shuffled.
Today, we've dropped to somewhere around position 90.
I agree: appears to be a random change. There are many
(low quality) 'new' sites in the top positions.
I enjoyed 12K indexed pages on Google for 2 years. 2-3 months ago it has abruptly dropped to 500. Can't get Google to index other pages with no means: sitemaps, reinclusion request ... Before I filed a reinclusion request the situation was slightly better (570K) and next day of submitting request it dropped to 530 and may go lower I'm afraid. That seems to be the major problem - lost traffic at least by 50-60% to this crap. Whatever is indexed holds on in serps very well, however it's just 10% of pages submitted in sitemaps.
Is Patience the only techniques to apply? Shouldn't have submitted for reinclusion either, probably.
With the other website which is much newer occures a little different story: 80% of pages swiftly migrated to supplemental results (for good reason, I admit) and settle there seems forever - I have rewritten all these pages and eliminated that reason, Google doesn't care - has old copies in cash and sticks with it.
Should I just sit still or there is something I still could do?
On March 16th, 3 of the 10 sub-domains suffered a drastic loss of pages. The main sub-domain went from 12,800 pages to 750 pages indexed in Google.
Traffic actually stayed about the same until April 16th. Then it dropped on ALL sub-domains to about 1/3 of the normal traffic. During this time there were no further reductions in pages indexed for any of my sites.
These sites also saw another significant drop in traffic starting April 28th. Again, no additional changes in pages indexed. This reduction in traffic dropped me to about 1/10 of the original traffic for these sites.
I monitored daily for pages indexed and possible supplimental pages. I have never seen the "supplimental page" problem for any of these sites. I never saw a problem with the main index page NOT being reported first in a Site: search result.
FINALLY: On July 16th ( a mere 4 months to the day) my "lost pages" were magically returned to the Google index!
Traffic slowly picked up BUT only a little. - I will continue to be patient - I told myself...
On July 27th most Google traffic disappeared!
Ironically, All traffic disappeared on all but 2 of my sub-domains. WHAT HAPPENED?
The number of pages indexed in Google had not changed for any of the sites!
BUT BUT BUT...
On ALL of the sites that the traffic disappeared the main index page was no longer the first page returned in a site: search. The 2 sites that are still getting Google traffic have their main index page listed in the first result.
I find it curious that these 10 different sub-domains (each has own external links and PR and different subject matter) seem to have ALL experienced similar reductions in traffic at the exact same time even though only 3 of them experienced loss of pages in Google.
YET on July 27th 2 of these sites avoided the "index page" displacement in the Site: search results and therefore are still getting Google traffic when the other sites lost all traffic.
It seems that sub-domains are treated as individual/independent websites only to a certain extent.
...I am certainly praying that this "index page" issue does not last for months on end - this is rediculous.
caryl
I don't think so...
The sub-domains all follow the same theme, they just pertain to different aspects of that theme.
The main "problem" began months ago - long before the "billion page subdomain spam" and the current issue of the displaced index page is also one I have read about in this forum for quite some time now. (it is just that it has finally 'infected' some of my sites)
If I was to speculate...
Big Daddy was a move on Googles part to store information in a database. That database contains the information from which Google calculates its results.
IF - for whatever reason - that pertainant data regarding YOUR website is NOT represented, or represented correctly in the current datasets in the Google Database, your site's placement in the results will reflect it.
IMHO
caryl
Several of us are trying to piece together evidence from sites that suffered ranking problems on 27 June. Is this the neighborhood of when your troubles appeared? If it is, does your Home Page appear as the first result on a Google site: query, or is it perhaps far down the list or even missing?
I noticed this too. My targeted landing pages were pulled out of the first ten results, but my homepage is now showing as the #1 result for certain keywords, whereas others have completely disapeared.
Interestingly enough almost all of my competitors have been completely dropped from the first page and replaced with irrelevant crap, nothing even relating to the search. Something screwy is definitely going on here and its making for a lousy user experience, but also it is making me unhappy which of course is most important. I agree with this conclusion:
In any event, this update/data refresh is very buggy, I'm sure Google will fix it over the next few days. I wouldn't do too much to change your current websites at this time until everyone is reporting a non-buggy update. Any major changes out of fear or panic might cost you more in the end. :)Patience may just be the key to getting past this craziness.
I think I am with every one when I say that that I hope this is just a temporary bug and will get fixed in the next few days. It is hot and this is my season.
I would also appreciate it if someone could suggest where to start when it comes to optimizing my site. I would guess there are thousands of threads on this site but if there is a good starting point i would appreciate it. Thanks again for a great community, I look forward to becoming more active.
[edited by: tedster at 11:33 pm (utc) on July 28, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] No specifics or URLs, please [/edit] [/edit][/1]
Most of page 1 is websites I have never seen before and I check the KW daily. #1 site does not even come up when you click it. Google cache for the site is from Oct 29, 2005
After 5-6 years with our website this is the strangest thing I have ever seen. I hope they see this is a problem and not just webmaster complaing again.
At 7pm CST tonight I noted that our rankings for our key terms miraculously reappeared in the same positions as they were prior to this mess -- it took about 3 1/2 days total -- all DC's show the key terms on first page whereas 3 hours ago they were in the 90-100's?! Anyone else notice any improvements in their positions taking the same amount of time?
I am back on the first page, too. What a relief. :D
I don't know how long I was out in total but I first noticed it on the weekend of 7/16
Prayer works.
:)
This means that google highlighted around 230 unrelevant words (in sidebar and footer of the page) as a second keyword.
This page was chached on July 23, and it is listed at the bottom of all search results, althougt it is well optimised. Search results which are better positioned on the search page are mostly not relevant to searched 2kw term.
Have anyone noticed something similar?
Regards.
Good thing. with the SERP results generating irrelevant, off-topic crap, there was no way that change was going to stick for long.
Yes, and probably still playing around with the www sub-domain versus non-www problem.
Pages for: "Blue widgets" in google today are 1000 pages indexed for that keyword and you are number 1.
Data refresh comes along, the algo does not change but there are now 200 additional pages (1200 total) for the keyword "blue widgets"
Now, if all two hundred of those pages score better than your number one page, now your serps change and you are 201.
Thats an extreme example, but imagine how it would work if there were millions of result for a competive keyword and how new or old data could effect you as it comes into the index.
You're about a million miles off base with your whole refresh-equals-new-pages theory.
That is an extreme example. One thing we have noticed recently with quite a few keywords we monitor is that googles index is growing.
One keyword before jun 27th in our niche had 3423 results returned, this most recent data refresh it had grown to 6232 results.
It really depends on the keyword but the index in google is growing with these data refreshes.
As the index grows, you will get bounced around quite a bit if your in a real competitive keyword.
It will level out as the data refreshes get more frequent. Its the old google dance....
