Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I want to echo Outland88's comments on the previous page:
...Google is rotating results, changing the positioning daily, and showing sites on a day/night schedule with many keywords. You can’t tell what you’re going to get whenever you do a search. It can explain traffic drops. Google probably has the rankings tied to weather conditions and the price of oil to name a zillion things.
Just finished putting together a spreadsheet that draws from a sampling of ranking positions for eight keyword phrases (3 words) that normally drive substantial traffic for a specific site. The "normal position" for each phrase is between 1 and 15, and I've seen occasional jumps of as much as 10 positions in a single day.
Taking about 15 samples each month for the past year, averaging those results and putting it into a fancy graph, it seems that each phrase has generally kept a particular trend (up/down/equal) for a period of 3 months, followed by a "bump" and then either maintaining the previous trend or establishing a new one. The phrases consist of 2 sets of closely related, nearly interchangeable keywords.
I don't think anything can predicted from a single SERP drop unless the site itself has undergone considerable changes or the webmaster is engaging in aggressive and possibly greyhat marketing/SEO tactics.
If you worry too much about a sudden drop, maybe it's time to take a step back from it all...
[edited by: tedster at 5:47 pm (utc) on June 1, 2009]
Still on page 9 this morning.
They say if you are already on Google no need to submit, even when you're on Page 9, Is that a reconsider yet, or do I have to wait longer now. I have no business since this has happened. Incredible how Google can make you feel isn't it?
Just want to mention how great you guys have been, and I'm very grateful for all your input. It is appreciated
K
whereas G ignores them
Do you mean using Webmaster tools?
Cheers
Sid
Mirror, what do you mean -950 penalty? How do you know if you've been penalised by them? Other than the drops, what/where do you find out?
Cheers
Sid
PS Just search on Google for Webmaster Tools
Hi,
I started working on a site which had 8,000 views per day for about 1 year ago.
Site improved through time little by little that till 1 month ago I had 35,000 page views per day.
About 2 weeks ago I started losing my page views. and about 4 days ago my page views decreased to 3,500 per day.
80% of my site visitors comes from google results. When I search a keyword that it always was in th first page, now It has gone to the page 10 and after.
I'm not sure what exactly has happened. My site is penalized? How can I find out what is the reason so that I could fix it?
[edited by: tedster at 4:42 pm (utc) on June 15, 2009]
Webmaster Tools? Don't know. Sorry, Please bear in mind, I know very little about the lingo, and very little technical knowledge.
K_Harris - For someone who doesn't know the lingo, you're managing to ask some excellent questions. :)
I think for some of the terminology, though, you could save a lot of time by also using Google and our site search and doing some background reading.
Eg, a plain vanilla Google Search for webmaster tools [google.com] will give you the Google's Webmaster Tools [google.com] page as the first result, with this in the snippet....
Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google. To get started, simply add and verify your site and you'll...
You may have to dig a little deeper for some terminology....
...what do you mean -950 penalty?
Eg, here the "-" sign may create some problems for some searches. The first place I'd look for answers to many of your questions is in our Hot Topics section, which is always pinned to the top of this forum's home page. There's an entire section on penalties, which goes into a lot of what you're asking.
You can also use our site search, which you'll find as "search" in the tiny menu up at the top of each page on the site... or, in Google, you can just append site:webmasterworld.com to whatever search you're doing.
I am hearing whispers around that some of the sites hit with a Google penalty was from buying links from a couple of companys that offer EDU links.
Does this ring true with an yone here?
And Jason, no, I've done nothing to the site to cause them removing it
Edit... I can't use as I need to.....
Copy the meta tag below, and paste it into your site's home page. It should go in the <head> section, before the first <body> section.
and I can't do that, and my webguy couldn't care less
[edited by: K_Harris at 8:09 pm (utc) on June 15, 2009]
A site: search showed our 5500 ish pages fall gradually to about 300 a few days ago, but now we're rising again, right now at around 600 pages returned.
What was odd - and i don't have a clue about the reason for this is if i search for key phrase i'm nowhere to be seen, but if i search for "key phrase" i'm in spot #1 for keywords i used to rank well for.
I'm sitting tight for the time being - hopefully the site: results increasing is a good sign!
some of the sites hit with a Google penalty was from buying links from a couple of companys that offer EDU links.
We were discussing that earlier in this thread - and not just EDU links, either, although they were involved in several cases. And it was not always links that were actually purchased, but sometimes just links that look like they might have been padi for because of placement and formatting.
In the last month or so alot have pages have disappeared on several domains we control and have pretty much all returned in the last week.
Have you updated your homepage recently or adding any internal links pointing back to the index recently?
When I do a site: search the home page is missing from the results. Is this a temporary glitch or penalty?
If anyone recalls the post-Halloween changes we discussed last November [webmasterworld.com] you'll also remember sometime very similar - a LOT of home pages went missing. It seems that Google maintains a separate data-set of domain roots -- in the case of last November, apparently domains with some degree of trust -- and back then they didn't get properly imported in the main index.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if something like that is going on again. This approach of maintaining separate lists of domain roots for various purposes is an approach Google seems to like to use. I'm betting that this current set of missing home pages will be back soon. Although I'm not so sure it's the same list that whitenight and others were tracking last November. It may have a different set of criteria attached.
This approach of maintaining separate lists of domain roots for various purposes is an approach Google seems to like to use.
I had recovered to 7th - damn it! ;)
Im noticing pretty much a identical situation to what you guys are talking about. We noticed a big change on Friday 29th May then again on Friday 12th June.
For curtain terms we keep popping back in but for only a few hours. Im just holding out hoping that G sorts its self out. In the mean time im going through and removing and duplicate tittles.
I ask as I am seeing lots of non UK sites in the web search that were not there before. I wonder if Google is removing the UK bias to the UK only search. With the influx of non UK sites possibly outranking the UK ones this could push sites down the SERPS.
Just a thought...
Some days there does seem a large number of non UK sites appearing on Google.co.uk
Although, it's not affecting my other keywords today.
They must keep changing the filter.
