Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Any thoughts on this? Up until recently, my site did not rank in the top 1000 in Google for my main search term. I did a bit of research, made a lot of changes, bought some software to help even. Since then it had a dramatic increase in placement. In the space of around two months it moved up to place 19.
I have not made any changes in last 4 weeks, but it has still been climbing......until yesterday. It has now dropped out of the top 1000 again. The site still ranks for other words and has not been dumped all together.
I am feeling a bit confused. Could any one offer advice please?
[edited by: tedster at 6:18 pm (utc) on Dec. 3, 2007]
Couldn't it be that rankings for a certain page/term have just fallen x spots? Why does it always have to be a "minus x penalty"?
Exactly the right question, I think. If you can identify a specific factor that makes the -5 drop happen, and then remove that factor and see ranking pop back - I'd say you have a good case for having identified a penalty. Otherwise, it can be difficult to say whether the Google algo changed, or maybe your competition improved, or maybe you made some change that had a stronger effect than you thought it would.
I'm not saying positively that a -5 penalty (or "go to position #6" penalty) doesn't exist right now, but I am asking if anyone who thinks it does can zero in on it a bit more.
[edited by: tedster at 12:29 am (utc) on Dec. 25, 2007]
That is why it looks like a penalty. As far the exact number I see -5 & -6 drop, depending on the phrase.
Also, I saw this drop start about a week ago on just a few datacenters. I started looking at other datacenters since one search I did showed this -5 drop, so I wanted to check it out. Then over the course of about 5 days it propagated to all datacenters.
To think out loud about whether a -5 exists
Couldn't it be that rankings for a certain page/term have just fallen x spots? Why does it always have to be a "minus x penalty"?
That's what I was just saying in the second half of the sentence you quoted, only I went on to call it "n"...
...chances are that enough of us have seen a drop for any specific number of places that we could create a number of minus-n "penalties" or filters. Any -3 drops, for example?
Does anyone have a thought as to what may be causing this?
Is it industry specific?
At 1 am PST on the 22nd my Google traffic crashed very hard, 80-90%--I have made no changes recently excpt for routine updates.
This specific website is an online widgets website. I also have another online widgets website (15.000 visitors a day) that is still in the same position for keywords in Google.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:07 am (utc) on Dec. 25, 2007]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]
One time the loss lasted 54 days and mysteriously returned, the next time it was 18 days. Each time I went crazy trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Now I'm turning my back and retiring from this madness. If the traffic mysteriously returns fine, I'll take the money, but the internet has now lost me because of Google's heavy handed incompetence and arrogance. Merry Christmas and Good Bye!
In fact, the last time this happened, it happened on 20-21st December 2006, when traffic plummeted. The traffic returned on January 6th-7th, 2007.
In conclusion, it is likely that Google are fiddling around with the index at a time when they hope it will do the least damage. Whether we need to await another data refresh, or wait for a "data push" or whatever, I am optimistic that traffic will return again. For my own site I do not believe we have received a penalty.
Happy Christmas to you All!
@ Soapystar
If there is a filter for the Top5 - should'nt it affect all pages of the domains?
@ Wibfision
It can be that google is playing with the index - a lot of my keywords have gone on 7. December - Now i found the missing key... 95% of them on place 11 - in normal search thats the first result on the 2nd page. I dont know what this mean... maybe they are playing with the top ten :-)
But for me they are using really the time with less damage :)
Mikki
From my perspective we can skip the philosophical debate about nomenclature.
This is a real problem that those affected by it need to get past. Does anyone have a thought as to what may be causing this?Is it industry specific?
It is more than a "philosophical debate about nomenclature". Until the "issue" can be identified, it can't be resolved, and no one here has all the answers for you just yet.
@ OnlyToday
What do you mean with "mysteriously returned"?
Hi, the last time when your traffic has dropped... was it near the middle of october this year?
The last days i had continued my work at the site... updating data... cleaning internal links... but no big changes :)
Take care
Mikki
Hi, the last time when your traffic has dropped... was it near the middle of october this year?
For some keys i am back, some other keys are listed on 2nd page... and then other keys have just chaos in the results :)
Often there are Sites on the first places, where i see only the keyword... but some of them not have the Topic...
In Webmaster-Tools its all ok... i dont understand this, really...
Sorry, you misunderstood what I was saying "philosophical debate about nomenclature". "nomenclature", referring to the naming convention of this "issue". If you read earlier posts you will understand what I am saying.
I agree with you, "Until the "issue" can be identified, it can't be resolved". That is my thinking too.
No,
Last year showed us some heavy movement in the SERP’s during this time
So any observations about the actual SERPs, rather than only the traffic in general?
Good point, kamikaze. An almost identical shift in SERP's happened during the '06 holidays.
As to tedster's question:
I have several sites who's SERPs slipped, then recovered, then slipped again.
I'm also seeing varying SERPs in various datacenters, and they seem to be shifting about every 3-4 days or so.
One of the sites which is very heavily searched in my neck of the woods hasn't budged..
FWIW
.
[edited by: tedster at 3:55 pm (utc) on Dec. 26, 2007]
[edit reason] remove specific market niche [/edit]
Sandboxsam, I apologize for misunderstanding you earlier. I know what you mean -- and I think I am trying to say the same thing.
[webmasterworld.com...]
That way we can keep this thread open for other observations.
My guess is that having images right in line with other organic results proved to be too much of an eye magnet and too many users were overlooking the rest of the SERP.
I also notice that when Google's music search takes the top position, it doesn't count as one of the ten spots - that is, ten other results follow it, so it's like the old one box deployment.
It's a kinder gentler universal search, altogether, and it is helping some of my clients get clicks that were stolen by the flashy first deployment. I'm thinking that chasing after "viral video" as an organic strategy may not be the big deal that many thought it would be - although as a social media strategy it can still rock the house.
I do like universal search (as a user) but I like it presented the way it is now verses the way it was. Google was beginning to look more like Yahoo and moving away from its roots of a straight forward and clean search tool.
Essentially incorporate the iGoogle profile features into Preferences. The current Global Preferences are very primitive and underdeveloped. Basically nothing added since Number of Results (10-100). When was that introduced? 2001?!
You could make custom search results with three columns, for example: text, images, video... 10 of each per page. A lot of young people would dig that.
Split screens would work well for news junkies, too. Half text news, half video news, 10 of each per page.
p/g
My site does have a bit of seasonality to it. But this was quite a surge since Wednesday. With the US holidays, I would have thought this to be a quiet week.
I just looked, Google is way up compared to Yahoo traffic, so something must have happened.
[edited by: BillyS at 1:19 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2007]
I decided to enter a pretty competitive area (against Brett's 26 step recommendation, but an area that I happened to know and understand). There are lots of "big money" terms in this area - meaning that holding #1 for a one or two word term is going to send a lot of traffic.
My philosophy was to try and target secondary terms. Things I believed people would search for, but only if they entered fairly specific (and long) search terms.
I've noticed that a lot of our traffic is coming from long terms. So I'm wondering if Google is starting to deploy some technology dealing with this recent announcement [webmasterworld.com].
< continued here: [webmasterworld.com...] >
[edited by: tedster at 10:36 pm (utc) on Jan. 2, 2008]
