Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Hello guys,
One of my sites got hit.
Background information
1. One year old website
2. Niche terms with low competition and been number #1 for 2 terms for more than 6 months
In mid december my #1 got to around #6 position but fluctuating sometimes back and sometimes around #6 and now got stuck on #6
Conditions
* I have keyword in the domain - e.g. www.keyword.net and that term got hit (+ some deep pages optimized for terms)
* The site is misspelling site - the site is ranking on mispellings of very competitive words. On these misspellings there is very low competiton and mostly forums/old sites which are not optimized for the misspelling at all.
* The site was entirely ranked on SEO. No PPC budget and no brand recognition
* Site was still getting some back links but the quality could be questionable - paid links but relevant
* All 3 terms that I was ranking for had lots of links with the same anchor texts and only small variations were present
* All the traffic went down, not only these 3 terms. Also my brand name - which is generic name ranks on #6
* I am using Google Analytics and other google products heavily. The site was interlinked with other of my sites but these have not been penalized.
* The homepage was changing constantly in last months and there have been relevant outgoing links to my other sites, which have not been hit.
* One of the deep pages that got hit, have been redesigned about 2-3 weeks before it got hit, with new content and template
[edited by: tedster at 6:05 pm (utc) on Jan. 5, 2008]
My rankings have only dropped for very competitive phrases.
This seems to be a common factor. Often less competitive phrases that include one extra word are still top ranked, but the traffic they provide is minimal.
The drop is more what I would have expected from implementing the Phrase-Based Indexing patents [webmasterworld.com] - that is, it's more what I expected than the devastating -950, or "end of results", that some sites have seen. At the same time, always dropping to a specific position such as #6 is not specifically mentioned in the patents and seems to be against the spirit of the invention.
Still, those patents do allow for more than one type of phrase-based demotion and more than one type of promotion, too. They only offer "for instance" examples.
if we'd asked, say, "Is Google Using a Position #4 "Penalty"?, how many would say they've observed such a shift in ranking?
That is one of the important fallacies we need to guard against. The possibility that we are looking at nothing but coincidence has made these early analysis steps more difficult. The question is "Do we have something real here, rather than a mirage." However, the whole reason I began a dedicated thread was that the number of reports that rolled in for exactly a #1 to #6 demotion during mid December seemed excessively high to be mere coincidence.
The additional examples I've seen since then seem to confirm that we do have something real under our microscope. The timing of the drops, the previously strong #1 for many months or years, and the fall to exactly #6 all seem to confirm this.
tedster, I read your conclusions with interest but they do not appear to take into account those cases where results lower than #6 where *upgraded* to that position. There are a few mentioned here. This would weaken the theory of demotion but would not completely discard the idea that some sites have been singled out for some reason. Could you please clarify if your analysis includes sites that show simultaneously reranks from 1 to 6 as well as <6 to 6?
Also, I have seen stats for affected sites where the drop in traffic has been substantial - 50% + -. Not sure if the rest of the members who have six'd sites agree with this number but it shows that dropping below the fold can really hurt someones traffic and should not be dismissed as a tiny move from 1 to 6 within the context of 40 million results. I've seen indications that there is an even greater quality deterioration for the remaining traffic.
I've noticed too that many theories expressed revolve around the notion of punishment but I remember having read recently someone's comment about sites who reached top position a long time ago and remained there long enough to gather backlinks organically consolidating the position achieved. The person commenting appeared to be complaining about the fact that although the high position was deserved, it had been actually forced (does the end justify the means?). Does anyone consider the possibility that Google may now want to level the playing field by lowering this highly regarded sites below the fold and give others the same exposure and ability to get noticed? Sorry if this sounds like a silly idea.
Could you please clarify if your analysis includes sites that show simultaneously reranks from 1 to 6 as well as <6 to 6?
No, the examples I'm looking at do not include this kind of drop. It may be that something like this is also part of the overall picture, but the great number of reports that came in were specifially from #1 to #6, they all happened at the same time, and they all happened to websites with a long-standing #1.
I am intentionally focusing on just these cases right now in my data sample. My concern is that other cases ("2 to 6" or "3 to 6") may well get into very fuzzy territory. In fact, even the #1 to #6 territory is already pretty fuzzy. If I accidentally include data that is not really from the same phenomenon, then no clear conclusions can result.
In fact, even the #1 to #6 territory is already pretty fuzzy
Sigh, can we eliminate of the "fuzzy"-ness of this issue?
It's a very easy experiment...
Every SEO on here that has half a clue should be able to move their new #6 to a #5, #4, #3 for at least a few hours to several days if they know anything about SEO.
I would like all the "fuzzied" to simply try to move their new #6 to say oh...anything above #6 for a 12-hour period on Any Datacenter
That way we can focus on the solutions instead of continually saying perhaps "there is no spoon".
(Cain and I are excluded from the experiment since we're the only ones seeing results reverting back to #1 positions occasionally)
Is anyone seeing this on pages that have been 950ed for other more competitive phrases?
Not for any -950s, but did notice a competitor who got -30ed for about 2 years seems to be released from their penalty.
I guess my question here, glitch or no glitch, is when the issue might 'end'. Two websites I see no longer have the issue, and have done nothing different to change anything.
Yet another website that gets regular natural links has all three top phrases '6'ed'
Go figure...
Seems like we have some additional penalty on the the US google site.
On other point, for the same kw but singular we are #1 on all the google sites. The singular and plural version of the keyword get the same number of queries according to all the keyword tools.
Any ideas?
From the multiple datacenter position check I can see that the change is on 23 datacenters all #1.
I haven't done anything on the sites since december, no new incoming links, no content changes.
Again - both terms are misspellings that are not competitive at all, 1 is a keyword which is exact match on my domain (the one that is still on #6) the other one is a keyword on deep link page.
[edited by: tedster at 4:48 pm (utc) on Jan. 7, 2008]
My situation is a little different but I am seeing the same results as others currently. For about four (4) years I held the #1 spot for a highly competitive 2 word keyword phrase and its plural. Then about 1 year ago (end of Jan 2007) the ranking dropped to #8, #9, #7, #6 etc. depending on the day it seemed. At the time the only difference was the addition of a new line of product and so some changes to the menu and front page but nothing major.
Never purchased text ads previously and most links were natural, with the occasional reciprocal (but not many and all topic related). So over the course of the past year the site has never gone above #3 and never really stayed in one position consistently but always remained on the first page.
Over the year some on-page tweaking has been does but also began purchasing directory links and text link advertising. All of this hasn't really changed the ranking much as the site stayed between #5-#7 mostly. Also, no Adwords PPCs done at all.
As of the end of Dec 2007 the site has been pegged at #6, yet secondary keyword phrases that contain the main keyword phrase rank #1 still. Also, one competitor that was never anywhere near the first page is sitting at #3 today, they have been bouncing around between #4-#8 (never #6) since late Dec 2007.
Some general observations:
Other than the first two results (which were #2 & #3 behind my site) a few sites that never ranked well have shown up on the first page SERPs have the keyword in the URL.
Seems targeted to specific competitive keywords and phrases as the addition of another word yields a #1 ranking. (i.e. "keyword keyword" = #6 vs. "secondary keyword keyword" = #1)
*EDIT*
Also, my site is sitting at #6 across all "allins:" searches too...anyone else see that?
Yes. I have allins searches at #6 as well. The phrase that got back to #1 is #1 on allins as well.
Since I've never had a -950 penalty, I haven't much paid attention to the fuss. But thanks to Robert's repeating of a question and reading potential geek [webmasterworld.com], something struck me.
Are the pages with a #6 penalty linking to a page that has been penalized by -950 or even -30?
Theory: It might be hard to locate as we all target multiply terms on each page, but perhaps linking to a -950ed(-30ed) page for any term is causing this "penalty" for a page that Google is "sure" belongs on the first page (in fact #1)
In the past, I never worried about linking to "bad neighborhoods" as they simply didn't exist. A page was either indexed/cached or it was banned. There were no "bad neighborhoods"...
But now Google actually has "bad neighborhoods" -- pages with SERP penalties.
It's going to take some extensive checking/testing depending on the size of your site, but I have a suspicion that one of those pages we target has a -950(30) penalty for a term we don't really care if it ranks or not. And the pages affected are linking to that page.
Note - Please prove me wrong, but please test it before saying nay or yea. :)
The outbound link possibility is an angle I'm currently researching - thanks for the brainstorm, whitenight. Linking to a penalized site is a tough one to be thorough about researching - unless we're talking only about heavy-duty penalties like the -30. But this could be a fruitful angle. Will report back if/when I have something more definitive to say.
On one website I have seen the issue lifted, nothing at all was changed. All links out are as they have always been. The only explanation which might work with -950 linking scenario would be if one of the websites we do link do went -950 then came out and immediately ranked well again. Judging by the types of links we give out, a total of 6, it is unlikely.
Yet another site has not recovered from this and links out to noone.
Yet another site has not recovered from this and links out to noone.
It may not only be linking out to other sites pages, but to one's own "questionably ranking" pages.
Have you noticed any of the pages of that site fluctuating wildly within certain SERPs? ie. #20 one week, #80 the next week? (Numbers may vary)
T
Only when I cut the title search from 14 words (original) to the first 10, the 6'd shows at #1 and the copycat at #2.
I took advantage of this demotion and changed a few affected pages and went almost tableless. I wanted to do this for a long time and this seemed to be the perfect ocassion. In one of these pages -an inner page with now much improved html- I slightly changed the title to reflect better the theme on the page. The new page was cached about a week ago and searching for its new title it still shows up at #6. This page only has 2 outbounds and links internally to pages that appear to be reputable. The content is somewhat of a personal interpretation on the theme and I included videos taken on the streets (with permission) to make it even more unique. There is only one way to link to this page because of its unique theme and there are no synonyms for such word. I can't imagine why linking to this page using such word can become spam. Looking at the backlinks on yahoo there are dozens of links from .edu and .gov sites using that same anchor.
Strangely, when looking at the backlinks on Google the one listed as #1 seems to be a spam page with a lot of adult sidelinks.
[edited by: tedster at 1:03 am (utc) on Jan. 9, 2008]
The -30 penalty could be a possibility though, and I'll look into that now as I've had problems with pages going -30 but usually pop out when I get more links to the page. Thanks so far for your observations.
By golly I think I might have it.Since I've never had a -950 penalty, I haven't much paid attention to the fuss. But thanks to Robert's repeating of a question and reading potential geek, something struck me.
Are the pages with a #6 penalty linking to a page that has been penalized by -950 or even -30?
Theory: It might be hard to locate as we all target multiply terms on each page, but perhaps linking to a -950ed(-30ed) page for any term is causing this "penalty" for a page that Google is "sure" belongs on the first page (in fact #1)
In the past, I never worried about linking to "bad neighborhoods" as they simply didn't exist. A page was either indexed/cached or it was banned. There were no "bad neighborhoods"...
But now Google actually has "bad neighborhoods" -- pages with SERP penalties.It's going to take some extensive checking/testing depending on the size of your site, but I have a suspicion that one of those pages we target has a -950(30) penalty for a term we don't really care if it ranks or not. And the pages affected are linking to that page.
Note - Please prove me wrong, but please test it before saying nay or yea. :)
It has a single external link to the SSL certificate provider with a rel=nofollow on the link added since there was some speculation that outlinks on the affected page may be the issue.
Some of my back pages with content on also seem to be showing up at position six for their targetted terms. There are far too many examples of this to mean that this is a co-incidence. There are no external links at all on these back pages.
The overall traffic impact on our site is about 150 lost google referrals per day from a previous total of about 450. Some SEO work that I have done has mitigated this with about 100 of those lost visits compensated by improved traffic on MSN and Yahoo, but this is still hurting us, My plan was to be plus 200 visits a day in Jan from Nov but we are actually about minus fifty since Nov.
Most affected sites look to me to be less that four years old. Any exceptions?
Yes, one position 6 that I learned about is six years old, and another is 5.
Here's an interesting observation from one site owner. Every one of the postion 6 SERPs I've seen has NO Wikipedia results on page #1, even though in several cases it was there before the position 6 was applied. Does anyone sees an exception to this?
Here's an interesting observation from one site owner. Every one of the postion 6 SERPs I've seen has NO Wikipedia results on page #1, even though in several cases it was there before the position 6 was applied. Does anyone sees an exception to this?
I have one page after a quick check that is #6 with wikipedia in front of it, and for what it's worth that wikipedia page is linking to my page that is 6'd. This could be coincidence though, as I don't know where that page ranked before but allins also show it 6'd.
[edit] It seems to be a true 6'd penalty with wikipedia in front as well.
[edited by: Timetraveler at 5:49 pm (utc) on Jan. 9, 2008]
NO Wikipedia...Does anyone sees an exception to this
Yes, i have some wiki on a few terms. Nothing unusual for the SERPs penalty pattern We were #1 Wiki was #3 and sometime indented #4. Now wiki is #2, and we're now #6.
