Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Okay, for those of you who enjoy a good challenge, here’s the situation: I operate several location-specific vacation rental sites for a particular client. The search phrases I am aiming for are very competitive.
The oldest sites- with 2001 and 2002 start dates- were at the top of the SERPs prior to Big Daddy- and still are today. Two of the sites are newer, one has recently been released from the sandbox and is slowly but surely "climbing the charts"- it’s now on the 4th page. One of the sites is so new that it's still sandboxed.
Okay- so far so good. But there is a problem. The results for those sites all seem common-sensical. But there is one last site. And this one has been a thorn in my side for months now. This site was at #6 prior to Big Daddy under my main search query phrase. This site has a late 2003 start date- so is in between all the sites in terms of age. Am I being clear so far?
Okay- the problem is this last site I just made reference to has gone haywire in the Google SERPs since the Big Daddy update kicked in. At first it seemed a canonicalization issue might be at play since various versions of the homepage were showing up in the rankings. And even more strangely, often secondary pages would show up when they were clearly less relevant than our homepage was for the query and in terms of pr power.
Today, that site that was #6 for our main search phrase is now sitting at #89. It has bounced around in the #65-105 range for six weeks or so now.
What is difficult to understand is that each of these sites is structured in much the same way. Each site contains plenty of keyword-rich content and plenty of powerful BL's. The problem site shows 4700 backlinks in MSN and many more in Yahoo. Many of those links are quite powerful and very relevant- pr 5's and 6's; certainly enough to compete with the backlink power coming into our competitiors' sites.
So- considering there are plenty of powerful, relevant links coming in, and considering there is plenty of keyword rich and relevant content on the site, with more being added regularly, and considering the site is structured similarly to our other sites that are all doing well in Google, one can't help but wonder what’s going on?
Also, after checking our server logs, it doesn’t appear Google is having any problem spidering the site in question.
After emailing Google on three separate occasions I have, each time, received word back that the site is not penalized in any way.
So, that's the scenario. It’s been several months now. I'd really appreciate any feedback that might shed light on what the issue is. Is this just a Google algorithm glitch that I’ll have to wait out? Or is something else going on?
