Rankings dropped after installing Lightbox

[gabby]

After seeing several big name bloggers using a lightbox to collect email opt ins I decided to give it a try. I got lots more subscribers -- but soon I noticed that I was no longer able to get rankings in Google that I previously easily got No. 1 or No. 2 positions for.

Don't know if the lightbox is the problem, or I am just a victim of a new Google dance.

Anyone else seen this?

Will the use of a javascript based lightbox affect rankings?

[tedster]

A basic implementation of Lightbox for images shouldn't affect rankings - it doesn't create new html pages as far as I know. Instead it creates a modal window, in lieu of a js pop-up, and that modal window contains a large-scale overlay of the image.

But I do realize you are discussing using Lightbox for sign-up forms, not images - something relatively new on the scene. Are you using a pre-scripted version, such as the Wordpress plug-in? Or did you script your own version?

At any rate, an important issue would be whether your script creates new urls that googlebot spiders. Have you checked either Webmaster Tools or your own server logs for googlebot's recent activity?

Another potential factor is the age of your site - is it relatively new (just a few months? less than a year?)

My instinct tells me your ranking changes are not from Lightbox itself. It might be a side-effect in some way, but it's more likely to be some other change, and there certainly is the possibility of a change in the algo that affected your site. If there's a strong social media component to what you do, your backlinks may have less power than they used to, for instance.

[gabby]

tedster, I am using an Aweber lightbox on a site that is around 18 months old. It's a blog that does receive a lot of social media activity as far as comments go. It's not unusual for a post to receive 50 to 100 comments.

I added the lightbox less than a month ago. Previously I could rank near the top of Google for a search on a few keywords in the title of the post -- but in the last week the same search yields results that are not in the top 100.

The lightbox is strictly for collecting opt-in emails and nothing else.

[dstiles]

If NOT googlebot then
include lightbox
end if

I do that for contact and other email-based pages that google etc have no need to see.

[nippi]

I would hazard a guess that the problem is duplicate content. Your lightbox content is probably all duplicate, and all being indexed.

i had this happen, becuase i was opening

contact form
review form
add to favoritets form

etc etc

in a lightbox, and the content of these pages all got indexed.

a robots.txt file fixed the problem pronto.

[gbasvilla]

< moved from another location>

Good evening from Spain. I am developing a webpage that is a portal mainly based on different activities (like citysearch) but the description of the activity and the venue, etc will be shown in a light box.

I am struggling to understand whether this is a right move or maybe the biggest mistake that could ever been done. The reason for that is that I donīt know whether google is indexing or not the content in light box.

I know it is commonly used for images but the results are great so I wanted to give it a chance with other content.

Could anyone please help me? I would really appreciate.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:20 pm (utc) on Dec. 26, 2008]

[gbasvilla]

Hi there, is anyone online with this knowledge? thxs in advance

[johnnie]

If NOT googlebot then
include lightbox
end if

if (site.cloaking) {
site.penaltyfactor +=950;
}

[dstiles]

That works the other way around. I see no problem in hiding things from google that it should not see. For example, many people hide affilliate links, stop google following links to pages of duplicate or other contentious content and so on.

Displaying things to google that customers don't see is, of course, an entirely different matter.

[johnnie]

If you are using lightbox to create a pop-up, then google should see that you are using lightbox to create a pop-up. Presenting different pages to bots and users is, at least in my definition, cloaking.

[blend27]

We are using lightbox to create a pop-up to display information to the visitor, in some cases there are 3 links per page using lightbox. One of the pages is a "email a friend form". All thouse pages are Disallowed in robots.txt. Pages that have links to lightbox content have no problem ranking in top3 on Google, MSN and Yahoo.

[gbasvilla]

thxs for the help, very useful.

happy new year's eve to all of you. regards,

Guillermo