Dramatically dropped in SERP, need your opinions

[zahirshah]

Simply let me tell you that Google has dramatically dropped our site’s overall ranking yesterday.

We just did a meeting on the site issue and pointed out the major changes we have done about a week ago.

That major changes is: we have implemented an RSS or “CJ” that works like Google adsens. Each product page are showing about 5/6 relevant product on a product page called “more relevant buying options”.

We personally think that this major and unauthenticated ‘update” can cause because :

1) the content which shows are duplicate content of merchant sites
2) The keyword density of the page increased
3) suddenly “update” of the over all product pages

etc

Now can you people agree with us if this can the cause of such dramatically dropped in SERP? so we will remove these RSS/ “CJ” …

Many many thanks for your help and suggestion

[edited by: tedster at 4:39 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2007]
[edit reason] edited specific information [/edit]

[tedster]

Hello zahirshah, and welcome to the forums.

I'd first look at #3. Sitewide changes can trigger a period of "trust checking" and temporarily lower rankings. But if everything nyou changed is technically sound, that should not me for very long. It is important not to overreact to a change that just showed up. Sometimes it takes a few indexing cycles for Google to process major site changes.

Have your changes created many new URLs? Especially remember that a change in the query string means you've got a new url. And if you have created new urls, do variations of those urls also resolve to the "same page" with a 200 OK status? If so, you may have duplicate urls in addition to duplicate text.

[zahirshah]

hmm, thanks tedster

No there is no changes in the URLs, the relevant products which I was talking about which comes through that RSS/ “CJ” are redirect to merchant site and has a nofollow attribute.

tedster is it would be better not to remove these implementation of RSS, And wait for a week or 2 at the movement?

OR

would be better to remove the changes and make the site structure as of previous?

[tedster]

I assume these changes were desirable from a marketing perspective and you would prefer not to give them up, correct? As a general rule, I prefer not to throw a flurry of many changes at Google in rapid sequence. Unless you have very definitively spotted an exact problem that you can remedy, I would take some time to study the situation.

[zahirshah]

thanks tedster

Yeah you are right, these changes were desirable from a marketing perspective and for increasing the conversion.

So you mean that don’t remove these unless you got the accurate cause of the suddenly dropped.

Let me tell you the over all story of the site for deeply analysis

1) we have also an WWW issue, Google has indexed both the version of our site , the www and without www, a week ago. I have now redirected the www to without www version.

2) Before my joining this firm, the SEOs of this site had done something of over optimization and spamming which also had caused the site ban for 2 months about 3 months ago and had come back.

3) This site has also a lot back links form Geocities blogs/sites which these SEOs had created about 70 blogs before my joining here. This site also has a lot of reciprocal linking from automatically software sites which puts a site link automatically when you post their link.

So please you analysis all these problem deeply and let me know whats the exact cause and give me a solid suggestion which you would think for yourself when you faced to such problems?

Many thanks tedster

[tedster]

All of that tells me you should wait. Especially #2 means take it very easy with frequent changes. It's very much like the site is on probation with Google. Be gentle with changes and re-establish trust. You've already made these current sitewide changes with good intentions, so now give Google a chance to process them.

You may find, for a while at least, that Google reacts to any site-wide changes by dropping your rankings. If there are a lot of suspect backlinks, those too may be getting thrown out during this time.

If you have not already done so, definitely open a Webmaster Tools account.

[zahirshah]

hmm, what a great response at last

Many thanks tedster

OK, let me wait for Google to process the cycle.

And yeah tedster what you mean by “If you have not already done so, definitely open a Webmaster Tools account”, yeah I have already a Webmaster account. Can I remove my suspect backlinks from Webmaster tool and how?

[ziajunu]

No need to change your site. Just wait and see. Tomorrow you will see again in SERP. It happened with my site as well. Sudden drop - after 2/3 days it came back - lasted about 2 days - and now again gone. And I hope it will show again after next few days.

Make sure, your site has not penalized. Search with your domain keyword like "Web master world" , "Web masterworld" .. and if you see same result like past then your site has not penalized, will be surely shown again.

[RichTC]

This is very simple to answer

The sudden change to your site by including the "CJ" tripped a filter hence why google dropped your site. Its currently lost its trust and COULD be due to your trust rank being lower anyway due to the earlier issues the site has had.

You could do one of a few things:-

If your site has enough quailty content on it and this addition is genuinely improving the sites content for users then sit it out and your site should get restored in time. As a poster earlier commented it could come flying back within a couple of days as google keeps tweaking its filters.

If this addition is in truth not providing site users with any real value and has just turned your site into a "MFA" site then you need to either remove it, or ensure you have enough "Real Content" to support it.

If you have tripped a filter and you restore your site back to how it was previously it could still take some time now anyway. Best guess 6 mths or more to get back to where you were before unless you are lucky.

In all, if you keep changing your site structure as in your case and you keep tripping filters providing the "Crimes" are not to serious, you have to serve your time, learn from it and correct the problems but you may have to request a re-inclusion if your site gets taken out the index all together.

Trying not to sound harsh - if you keep messing with your site and dancing on googles guidelines all the time you will get hit and its just not worth the risk.

You need to Read again googles webmaster guidelines, establish your site and give it time, by your own admission your site has had previous penalties so its to be expected that your "Trust Rank" is going to be lower anyway. Your recent site changes have just tripped another filter in my mind and its possible that an older more established site with high levels of trust may have got away with what you have done, but in your case, with your already low levels of trust you have taken another hit.

Good Luck

[zahirshah]

Oh, its what a great suggestion too, many thanks RichTC

OK, we will analysis all of yours suggestions and will make decision which one is more authenticate … at the time I just got 2 more accurate opinions , the one from tedster and other one is your.

”Still waiting for more suggestions”

more opinion would be greatly appreciated from anyone

[CainIV]

Open a Webmaster tools account as Tedster mentioned and get to work fixing the www versus non www issue and Triple check it.

Eliminate any other issues and it is likely you will come close to the source problem.

My sense is that it could be duplicate content, but it's very hard to say.