Company name penalised? Dropped three pages.

[chucky]

The site is ranking well for other search terms but the company name has dropped to the third page.

The company name is also the name of an actress who died in January so news sites have come in above which isn't so suprising.

It's also brought in IMDB etc which doesn't make so much sense. Maybe Google's decided that it relates to the news articles and grouped them all together and decided that people don't mean this shop website.

The other thing is that a links page which lists the clients site has appeared above them in the rankings. This doesn't make any sense and makes me wonder if there is some sort of penalty.

Any help would be appreciated.

[edited by: tedster at 3:10 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2008]

[tedster]

I does sounds like it might be a bug, or possibly a temporary change due to that recent actress death. Maybe that "fresh results" algo for current topics is even where the bug lives, eh?

It's early in the game, and certainly might change again soon. In the mean time, if you don;t already have a Webmaster Tools account, I'd suggest one. Sometimes the information in there can tip you off to an issue you were'nt aware of.

[wilderness]

It's also brought in IMDB etc which doesn't make so much sense. Maybe Google's decided that it relates to the news articles and grouped them all together and decided that people don't mean this shop website.

Google SERPS, MOVE recently added (and available) OLD NY Times Archives to the head of everything.
Not sure what their criteria is for this priority?

[tedster]

Google does watch for "burstiness" in search terms - and they kick into a different gear when certain search terms show a significant spike. I'm not sure of all that's involved, but I've seen it before. A few months ago we also had a report about an increase in spidering when the topic of the site "heatedup" in the popular mind.