Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My site listed #1 for the site name without the .com, then #2 for another keyphrase which is very important to us. It's now listed for the site name at between #42 and #63 which fluctuates from day to day. It is still at #1 for the site name domain.com though, but has gone down to page 7, 8, 9 for the term we were #2 for.
We've lost masses of traffic due to this, and a number of other people have exactly the same symptoms. The site makes money for charities so we're really keen to fix this, as are some pretty big UK charities!
I have read the post about October changes, re-read all Googles rules and regulations and cannot for the life of me understand what's wrong.
Does anyone have any understanding of what might have been changed in October? Does anyone know of an emphasis change on any element of site structure/links/keywords etc etc?
The brief mention in a video from the sometimes illusive Mr Cutts, of being careful not to over-optimise for a keyword in relation to the 1:42 penalty doesn't seem to be relevant as we haven't done this.
One thing we are going to try is to 404 all our old redirected links now the new site has been up and running for over a year. They were all 301 redirected to relevant new pages, or to the homepage. I'm wondering if too many links redirected to the same page (homepage) is a problem, so we're going to kill them off. We don't have many though, we're not talking about 1000s, probably not even 100s.
Has anyone else recovered from this penalty yet?
If so, our members here named that the -950 penalty. I prefer not to use numbers for naming these ranking issues because they can make for confusion, but that name seemed to catch on. We have a lot of discussion here about it, and here's the summary thread [webmasterworld.com] which links into the main discussion that extended for about two years.
Now on to your other numbers: 40-60. What does that describe - a url that used to rank well but now ranks between #40 and #60?
I'm wondering if too many links redirected to the same page (homepage) is a problem
Yes, that can be a problem in some cases. If you really MUST eliminate established urls, then either redirect them to a true replacement page or let them return a 404/410 status.
However, I'm not aware of anything particular that happened in October, except for recalculation of some thresholds for over-optimization. Such recalculation is a periodic thing.
You can review the October SERP Changes thread [webmasterworld.com] and see what you find. It was a pretty quiet month, for the most part. What was being noticed didn't really roll out fully until right at the end of the month - just in time for the holiday season, as seems to be customary with Google.
Yes, sorry if I didn't clarify that too well - it seems as though sites which have suffered this penalty are now listed between number 40 and number 60 for their name 'domain' minus the .com etc. on the end, but are still #1 for their full 'domain.com'.
I don't think anyone could say our site is over-optimised. I've looked at keyword ratios and they're probably not even at their optimum.
Ah well...I shall keep on reading and hunting.
