Watching a Deep Rankings Drop Happen - what am I seeing?

[guru5571]

Just wondering what's happening on an established site?

Last night most all search traffic started drying up. This is across the board on all search terms for the site.

I found the new position for the top term which was on page 1 yesterday afternoon - on page 50 tonight. Now I've been tracking things and am seeing my position for this term drop about 9 places every 15-30 minutes. I'm currently on page 54 for this term now.

The site looks fine for site: and link: operators.

Anyone know what I am experiencing?

[guru5571]

Just an update. Now on page 56.

[guru5571]

Pretty strange. Looks like it topped out at page 58. Has now been gong back down one page at a time. Now back down to page 55.

[santapaws]

exciting!

[tigger]

exciting! please ..........

I would start by looking at what you've been doing over the last few weeks, look at your content make sure its not weak, look at linking partners make sure the links are still in place or they haven't picked up a penalty, last thing ...............wait after all we all know G is jumping between the new / old G so you could be caught in between and the best approach is just to wait and see what happens

[Badcol]

Have you tried the sandbox for a comparison ? I see some big differences in the sites I'm monitoring, but admitedly ton a 50 page drop on any. I would try a site:www.sitename.com sitename search to see if you might have lost pages from the index.

All the best

BC

[guru5571]

OK, just checked again. Last time was a few hours ago, whenever I posted. Now I'm bouncing between page 49 and 50.

Badcol,
site:www.sitename.com search is fine and unchanged.

Found myself on page 21 of the sandbox.

[guru5571]

Wait I take that back. Page 21 in the sandbox has a page on my site that shouldn't really be ranking for the term.

Can't find the page that should rank yet in the sandbox.

[guru5571]

Tigger,

The last few weeks it has been gaining a few links from some small blogs. This has been constant for a few months since a big site noticed it a few months ago and gave it some buzz that has perpetuated at a low level.

[guru5571]

OK, currently found on page 51 and I did find it on page 54 of the sandbox. The sandbox has about 10 more results pages than the regular index at the moment. That wasn't the case an hour ago though.

I guess I'll have to accept things are in a great state of flux and just hope something close to the original rankings return at some point.

[Badcol]

hi guru,

Did you try site:www.sitename.com followed by the sitename without www. and .com ?

This can give some really strange results. For instance I have a 2000 pager which only shows 250 for a regular site search, but with the sitename as a stipulated term after the site search the sandbox returns 1800 pages.

[boredguru]

How is your internal linking structure? Are there any keywords at all that you are ranking for i.e Any keyword that is sending you traffic?

[guru5571]

I have one keyword sending me traffic. I rank on the first page for this somewhat competitive term. All other search traffic has completely dried up to zero.

Currently on page 48 for the keyword I've been tracking through this thread.

I've also checked Google Webmaster tools and looked at the top search queries for the site. All my original rankings are still there and it shows this was last updated September 18th. I realize this is for the last 7 days, though nothing has changed.

[guru5571]

Internal linking structure is good. All pages are well linked.

[rocco]

Check backlinks for scrapper backlinks. If you cannot find them start to search for your "title"s and other stuff from your website.
If there is no obvious problem, then you cannot do anything. Probably your site will be back within 2 weeks but drop again later.

[whitenight]

This sounds classically like on site issues.
Not anything offsite.

Are you the owner or the webmaster?

My first intuitive thought is/was:
"somehow they placed rel=nofollow on all/some internal links."

In other words, you (or the webmaster) needs to go thru the painstaking task of analyzing:
all source codes,
all robots directives,
ANY small changes someone made to the site in the past month.

As a start, get the _{free site-spidering program} to analyze your site.

You have to give us all the info you can, even it doesn't seem important to you.