Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've noticed an odd phenomenon happening with our rankings whereby the most obvious URL to compete for terms is not appearing, rather it's being replaced by another URL 4 or 5 pages down the rankings. To clarify:
1. example.com/some-category
2. example.com/some-category/product-in-the-category
Now, we used to be on page 1 or page 2 when people searched for "some category" and the first URL above would show up.
Now, for the same search, URL #1 is nowhere to be found, while URL #2 appears on page 4 or page 5.
It would appear that the first URL is being penalised or filtered for some reason.
So far the only thing I have to go on is that it is perhaps a knock-on effect of the "Mega Menu Problem" introduced by Tedster (http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3687528.htm [webmasterworld.com]). More specifically, URL #1 is included in the mega menu and perhaps this has triggered an over-optimisation penalty?
Our site ranks well for a wide variety of terms and we only have context-matching inbound links from other sites, so there is definitely no black hat involved here...
Any thoughts or light shed on this would be greatly appreaciated, thanks :)
[edited by: tedster at 10:04 pm (utc) on July 2, 2009]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it cannot be owned [/edit]
If I search for the domain, i.e.
"example.com/some-category"
It does come up in the search results. The page is also in the cache, i.e. If I search
cache:example.com/some-category
I've noticed that when I search for "example some category" URL #2 still comes up number 1 (URL #1 should obviously be the strongest candidate for this search)
It appears that URL #1 is almost being filtered for any search which has the keywords "some category"?
Does this shed any light on the matter?
What we think is logical and what google thinks the end user wants are sometimes two different things. Hence, I don't overdo directory keywords and filenames. I'm the K.I.S.S. camp.
I don't think that is what is happening here for a few reasons...
* URL #1 used to show up in top 20 whereas URL #2 shows up 40-50 (Ranking is related to relevancy in Google's eyes, hence it would seem that Google is showing the next most applicable result and that it does consider URL#1 more relevant)
* URL#2 is PR2 and URL#1 is PR4
* All of the listings in the category link back to the category itself, which makes the category page more "authorative" (if that's the right word) than any other product pages
I can't say yet what this is all about. Have you checked for any direct backlinks to the vanished URL?
I've done that check in two cases. Both times I found obviously spammy direct backlinks to the URL - and no spammy backlinking to the domain root at all. In fact, these backlinks had incorrect (off-theme) anchor text. That makes me wonder if off-theme google-bowling is effective right now. But again, I cannot confirm anything like that because the sample size is way too small.
If I were responsible for a site with such a ranking problem, I would put together a reconsideration request that explained what I found. I'd list all the spam links on a URL somewhere, then in the actual request, just give the Google team a link to that page.
I just checked what you suggested now on 2 test cases, and there are some definite parallels with what you are saying.
I looked at 2 category pages, each with a few inbound links, and noticed that they each had a linkback from an external site which was very closely related to the category page but which used anchor text corresponding with keywords that our homepage competes for. So for "category one" for example the incoming link anchor text was more for our homepage, i.e. something closer to the actual domain name.
BTW the inbound links above are not spammy at all, it's just the anchor text which is a little off.
The crazy thing is that all other categories I have checked do not have the above problem, nor do they have any direct inbound links - i.e. they rely on internal linking to rank well. Seems bizarre that having a backlink in a related field (albeit with slightly mismatched anchor text) would count against you?
I'm not sure what to make of this, I'm debating whether to approach the inbound sites and see if they would consider changing the anchor text to something more targeted. Either that or wait for the dust to settle with the update?
Maybe the on-theme backlink factor got weighted very heavily by Google and will be dialed back. Maybe there something else at play. I wish you (and the others I've seen) the best in recovering. This one seems quite touchy to me.
I just did a few searches and I see we have re-appeared back into the rankings for one of the two cases I spotted, i.e. URL#1 is back.
At present I suspect two possibilites
* Google had made changes to their algorithm
* We fixed up a whole batch of 404s that we picked up in WMT, perhaps related
Just thought I'd share and see if anyone else has seen anything similar to the above?
I'm going to pay a foreign company the 39.95 or whatever to throw a bunch of links at a competitors site using only one anchor text theme that they are already showing up on in the top 5 spots .
Now, if things were normal, this would not matter and the links will be discounted. However, if they suddenly drop for that phrase to the -50 or worse ranks, then it will be confirmed you can affect other site rankings and that is not a good thing at all.
As far as ethical, well it's really the only way to test the theory so they will take one for the team. They can then go through the hassle of finding the links and doing reinclusion requests for something they had nothing to do with.
If the test proves out, it could open up a whole new industry.
I'll let you know how it goes.
The concept is so bizarre - perhaps we could coin SED or "Search Engine deoptimisation" haha. Instead of optimising your own site you could just knock off all the sites around you, crazy.
Your post gives a pretty compelling argument for why Google would not have this in place though. Being able to control anything about other people's websites makes it seem unlikely that they would implement it. Would open up HUGE doors to manipulate rankings.
