Catastrophic and Sudden Plunge in Ranking

[GenghisKhan24]

Hello All:

A few months ago, I created a Flash-based site to promote a book I wrote. For the past two months (at least), the site has been #3 on Google when the book's title (either with or without quotes) is searched for. This continued until the late afternoon yesterday, when I noticed that the site had plunged down the rankings with warning. It is now around #120 when no quotes are used, and around #70 when quotes are used. Adding other information (such as my name) doesn't make the site crack the Top 50, to say nothing of the Top 10. In fact, it can make the ranking even worse.

I'm baffled. I changed nothing, and using diagnostics from Google's Webmaster Tools reveal no errors. It doesn't appear as if I've been banned, as the site comes up when I do a site:www.example.com search.

Even more puzzling is that fact that my personal site, which uses the identical architecture, hasn't been affected at all.

Any ideas? I've added a sitemap and filed a manual request for reconsideration, but otherwise I'm at a loss about what to do. The site is key to the promotional strategy for my book, and the sudden ranking drop thus threatens my livelihood.

Please help. Endless karma shall be your eternal reward.

All best, and cheers,
OV

[tedster]

My first suspect would be backlinks. Have you done anything to intentionally get backlinks, and if so, have you paid for some of them? Do your backlinks show a good variety of types - not all from one source, some from top-shelf directories, some from good and independent third party citations? Have the number of backlinks continued a natural growth pattern?

[bwnbwn]

plunged down the rankings with warning

Do you mean without warning or with a warning attached to the domain name?

[iInventedtheinternet]

This is exactly what is happening to us at the moment. Massive drop in traffic to one site (30K daily to 3K) while the rest of our network stays the same.

We don't use paid links, link exchanges, or ANY black hat. Almost all rel=nofollow to link out. We've been online for years. We have a network of widget sites. Each country gets it's own domain. We have a footer which links to each country but we've had it forever and lots of other widget sites in our space do the same thing. Can't think of anything else. Baffling and ridiculous that we can't even get an alert or notification of a penalty to correct it. Google just shot themselves in the foot. We spent 10G at least every month advertising on Adwords. Well that's gonna stop!

[tedster]

There are quite a few similar discussions here on this topic. While it's not safe to just assume it's a Google bug without doing some due diligence on the site (was it hacked? parasite hidden links, robots.txt alteration etc?) right now I also think there is a bug on the loose.

One difference I see between other reports and this one is that GenghisKhan24 is working with a relatively young site, not an old established warhorse, such as some of the other more suspicious reports. Still, if all is clean on inspection, it may also be caught by this "possible" bug.

[Whitey]

We have seen a site with similar issues in recent days and also suspect a bug. Something has tripped a filter.

Have you checked who has linked to you recently?

[edited by: Whitey at 9:40 pm (utc) on June 3, 2008]

[tedster]

Another factor just caught my eye while re-reading the opening post: "I created a Flash-based site..."

It's good that you caught some top rankings early on, but as your book gains prominence, it may be challenging to sustain those rankings with a Flash-based site. Some of this was discussed in recent thread: [webmasterworld.com...]

There are steps you can take to address this, but if the entire site is in one Flash movie, that's usually a problem. Several separate flash movies work better for the search engines. Titles and meta tags on your npages, plus anchor text in the sites backlinks can also help out a bit.

But the best solution, at least for the moment, is offering some "straight" html content, and the ideal would be having alternate content for ALL the Flash content.

Serving an alternate version of the flash files in straight text will outperform a flash-only website, and it also allows people to link to and bookmark inner content. If the original files used for developing the Flash are still available - source images and all that, then it may not be too big a deal to develop a stright html version of the pages.

[iInventedtheinternet]

Tedster, can you elaborate on the bug you think might be popping on the radar?

[tedster]

The symptom is seeing the Home Page vanish from the results for a "big" search term - for a well established website that has a solid history.

Wish I could see more, but that's all I've got for now - a significant increase for this kind of report. And of course, there are so many reasons that this might happen due to very real causes, that it's hard to know for sure that we've definitely got a bug and not a new feature ;)

Here's one of the other threads - still an active disucssion and now nearing a month old: Index page does not rank today but is still listed [webmasterworld.com]

[iInventedtheinternet]

Ahh ok that's not what's going on with us.

Thanks for the update.

[guru5571]

I'm not sure if this might be your problem, but I started another thread on this. Do your pages have really slow load times? If they do, perhaps this may be a factor.

< reference: [webmasterworld.com...] >

[edited by: tedster at 1:48 am (utc) on June 4, 2008]

[GenghisKhan24]

Many thanks to everyone who replied to my query. Sorry for the lateness of my own feedback--dealing with a four-month-old baby over here, in addition to work-related stresses.

Quick responses to some hanging questions:

1) My pages do, indeed, have relatively slow load times, due to their image-intensive nature. Is this a problem that simply can't be overcome?

2) Tedster, I think your idea re: creating some straight HTML content is spot on. I'm going to look into doing this ASAP.

3) Whitey, one curious thing that happened is that a single site drove a huge amount of traffic to my site--probably accounting for 99 percent of my traffic over the past four days. I wonder if this somehow tripped Google's filter--does such an arrangement typically trip alarms?

Many thanks, and cheers,
OV

[tedster]

I think your idea re: creating some straight HTML content is spot on

You want to be sure that when your serve the alternate content, it doesn't look like cloaking to Google. There is a free technology called SWFObject that does a great job of this, but it also allows sites to add content in their html that a flash-enabled browser never displays. That's a form of cloaking, and Google doesn't like it at all. So don't give in to that temptation.

Of course, if the Flash movie is just part of the revised pages, then the HTML part will be displayed to everyone - no risk there.

[Whitey]

does such an arrangement typically trip alarms

The site I am observing looks as though they have tripped a filter with some linking . In itself the change was probably compliant , but in combination with other elements it may have sent Google into a spin.

What you describe is some huge activity preceding this period of change. It's worth investigating further, especially if it's link or content related.

[keepontruckin]

I have seen a similar drop in rankings on our site. I do see a lot of unrequested and unwanted backlinks. Many with hidden links to us and some with adult content and a link to us on the page. Many gaming site links, etc. It's hard to believe google would allow an 'attack' like this to effect the ranking of a legitimate site. Anyone can do it and I suspect more and more people will once they realize how easy it is to sabotage a site. Of course it is impossible to have these links removed so what can we do now?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:29 am (utc) on June 4, 2008]

[outland88]

I do see a lot of unrequested and unwanted backlinks.

I'm seeing a lot of Indian SEO firms engaging in this since January and I don't quite understand why. It seems a lot is leaking out of the plex there.

[GenghisKhan24]

Tedster, many thanks for the warning on cloaking. I'll be careful.

I'm also hoping that Google "shakes off some dust" and rights itself somewhat in the coming days. I think the fact that I got so many hits from a single link tripped an alarm--unfairly, but so it goes in Google-world.

Thanks to all, and cheers,
OV

[Whitey]

I got so many hits from a single link tripped an alarm

Maybe not an alarm .... maybe a filter ..... maybe correctly applied .... maybe a bug.

It's best not to live in hope with Google. You have to be proactive in your analysis , as best you can , otherwise you could wait for ever.

What was the nature of the link , and why did the traffic spike and drop. Links can send 000's of hits e.g. big news stories referring to a site , but that doesn't mean the receiving site will drop. There's something more needed from your analysis to get a better sense of what's going on.

[GenghisKhan24]

Tedster, adding some HTML content and some new meta tags really did the trick! I'm back up to #3--though, strangely, only when the book title is searched without quotes. With quotes, it still languishes around #70. Very odd.

But for the moment, I'm optimistic--optimism that will surely vanish the next time the wrath of Google descends!

Cheers,
OV

[GenghisKhan24]

Last update--back with quotes, too, as well as all other permutations.

A rare happy ending, I reckon. Tedster, thanks a mil--your fixes worked splendidly.

Cheers,
OV

[oasisfan]

Same thing has hapened to our site- a plunge in traffic. We don't have any recip links (depite a lot of requests) . A good solid site, no underhand techniques and its 10 years old.

Any ideas?

[oasisfan]

One other thing I did notice our site was slow to load a few weeks ago but this was caused by slow loading adsense blocks-

It seems ironic if google have penalised us for slow loading and they caused it in the first place.

Moderators Note:
A number of members added posts to this thread about a sudden loss of rankings
for their previously solid sites. It seemed to occur on June 4, and it's probably not
the same thing that this current thread is discussing.

Those posts are moved to this thread - Major Ranking Losses - 2008 June 4 [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: tedster at 7:50 pm (utc) on June 6, 2008]