Drop in SERP for specific keywords

[Andreas8]

Hi,

I have a new site that is ranking ok for some of it's keywords. About a month ago, for a specific set of keywords it started to drop back in the SERPS. From top of page 2 to page 3 to page 4 and now its sitting, at top of page 5! GWMT actually showed it at its old position (a week behind) which was very painful to look at. Up until about this week. Now I had done a lot of link building to it for those keywords that dropped using 'Article directory' link/tags.

I saw briefly in another discussion that article directory links have recently been devalued by Google.

Have any other webmasters experienced this as well. (It started about three weeks ago.) Or have a triped a different penalty.

Thanks in advance.

[edited by: tedster at 5:32 pm (utc) on April 27, 2009]

[tedster]

You say the site is new - how new is it? I ask because it is common for early rankings to drop as a new site gains some history. The very first period is something like a test period where you get better rankings than normal as a kind of "free gift" - I've called this the honeymoon period.

Then the rankings drop, but the site often climbs back over time, as you continue to develop and market it, attracting backlinks and so on.

[Falconseye]

I have the same problem. When you search for "keyword1 keyword2" on google, it was bringing my site on page 19 (April 22). Today, the same search brings my site on page 34. Similar thing happened to another search. My site was listed on page 7 on April 22. Today, it dropped to page 14. I don't understand why this keeps happening. Please advise.

[edited by: tedster at 6:12 pm (utc) on April 27, 2009]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]

[Slinger]

I call this the pendulum swing. Its more commonly known as the DANCE. You will probably come up under that keyword between page 20-35 for the next 3 months. If after that time and during that time, G sees life going on in the site, then you will slowly start to climb.

[edited by: Slinger at 6:00 pm (utc) on April 27, 2009]

[Falconseye]

well, this dance kind of sucks. it's like 1 step forward, 5 steps backwards. Soon, google will fall of the dancing platform...

[Andreas8]

@ Tedster - I know what you are referring to with the temporary gift. I don't think its that. The domain is was first registered in 2003 and my content has been on there for about 10 months now.

My gut feel is that Google has just devalued 'Article directory' links. And all those links that were created using the author tag. Have now no weighting.

[tedster]

You could be right - we had an other thread recently where members were talking about this same possibility.

[Andreas8]

Tedster - sorry but I know what is going on. If I search for 'Key words' with a capital I'm on page 5 but if I search for (same) 'key words' without the capital I'm back on page two. This is a captilisation search thing. Which in my opinion doesn't improve search results.

Thanks all for your help.

[tedster]

Aha! At least you understand what the issue is, now. We've had a number of threads about capitalization creeping back into the SERPs - see [webmasterworld.com...] for instance.

This is not a well understood issue, so anything you can figure out would be welcome information.