Ranking lost on Google UK - but only for English results

[kerfuffle]

We have had a UK directory site for many years, which has always ranked well for competitive keywords, and lots of inbound links, all outbound links are no followed.

A little while ago we dropped far down in the search results - we found some duplication - took it out and this may or may not have fixed the problem, but we came back up in the results.

Then.. around 12,13 or 14th June, we fell right down on our most popular search term - around position 400 to 450!

But here's the strange thing. We have good ranking for this search term in www.google.pl (poland) www.google.ru (Russia), www.google.sk (Slovakia)

The server is in London

What could be going on?

[Whitey]

There are reports of problems over here [webmasterworld.com] with UK sites and also sites appearing with results in unrelated geographic areas.

-Does your site have a TLD .co.uk ?
-Are your keywords for geographic specific terms ?
-Are those terms acceptable in those other languages ? .pl and .ru [ strange for Russian of course ! ].

You also talk of "up and down" - are there any similarities to the Yo-Yo effect [webmasterworld.com]?

[kerfuffle]

Hi Whitey

- It has a TLD .co.uk
- Keywords are non geographic, although the UK is mentioned in a few places.
- When you say terms acceptable in other languages - the search terms are english words, and the sites showing are english related sites due to the fact that the search terms were in english.

UPDATE - OK - so now I have found something even more unexplainable.

If I do a search in google.co.uk for a search term we used to rank in the top 5 positions for, we are now around position 40 to 50 - BUT - If I change the language in the URL from EN to RU (Russian) - we rank number one!

In other words changing this part of the URL from [google.co.uk...] to [google.co.uk...]

How can this be? Totally foxed!

[tedster]

Yes, it is perplexing. So summarizing, there are two situations where you still rank well:

(1) non-English results on google.co.uk
(2) results on other country TLD Googles, such as google.ru

Have you checked a good sample of outbound links to be sure that they are all nofollow? Seems like dirrectories get in trouble with Google for sending PR to bad neighborhoods, so I'd want to be 100% sure on that.

Also, you say "lots of inbound links." Are there some high quality, "editorial" links in that backlink profile? Any paid links that aren't nofollowed?