Google rankings dropped overnight

[marketman666]

thank you for looking . i think this is the right place to post ,something happened to my site 2 days ago .It was ranking on page 2 for its most competitive keyword (domain name)and now its not available at all . now it only searches for some categories on pages 15-18 but the main url is out. while i was bookmarking my site 2 days ago in a few major bookmarking sites i also bookmarked on google (dont know why) and in my webmaster account i resubmit my site-map . nothing else . can this be the cause or i just got penalized by google for something.
can someone please tell me , i worked hard to get to page 2 and now its all gone. is there any way i can check why penalized and what to fix .
thank you

[crobb305]

marketman666,

Are your pages showing up under the site: operator (site:example.com)?

[member22]

Don't worry you just got bumped back because google is about to update it's SERP and when it does this your site is always bumped back and is even sometimes gone...

Just wait until the next update but your hard work will pay off !

[marketman666]

yes its showing in searches.my problem is that my secondary categories still work , but my main domain name is gone , this is what i worked on and most tageted . why did just my main url got bumped back?

[crobb305]

marketmann,

I am not sure I understand your concern. You say your "main domain name is gone". I assume you mean your "main page" (index page). Maybe if you were used to ranking on page 2, you failed to check page 1 today.

Have you checked your traffic levels? Maybe you're main page is fluctuating in rankings and perhaps you can't see it in the top 50. Just my two cents.

[edited by: tedster at 11:45 pm (utc) on Mar 16, 2010]

[marketman666]

yes , thank you for looking , i checked it well it was out for 2 days . its back , i guess after 2 days google put me back! but thank you so much for your help.

[crobb305]

marketmann,

Good to hear! Some of us have had some sites get hit with penalties/filters in the past 4 months. A few have been reinstated. I hope yours has returned for good (and it was more than likely not a penalty per se, rather a fluctuation, since you seem to be back after 2 days). And, you may see more fluctuations in the near future as Google is moving to their new infrastructure. I can't speak about that changeover in any intelligent terms (because I know little about it), but don't get too alarmed if you see some fluctuations.

[edited by: tedster at 11:28 pm (utc) on Mar 16, 2010]

[gouri]

Don't worry you just got bumped back because google is about to update it's SERP and when it does this your site is always bumped back and is even sometimes gone...

I have seen this sometimes but I am trying to understand why this may happen.

Does anyone know why this occurs?

[tedster]

My understanding is that it happens because of the way Google folds their data together when creating the back end for rankings after a significant change. It's the kind of thing we've been discussing in the thread Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2010 [webmasterworld.com]. Pay attention to whitenight's "trademarked" observations about ghost datasets.

Sometimes there is a major bug and many sites are affected. But most of the time and for most sites, the effect is minimal.

The important question is not really about Google's back end (unless you hope to get a job at the plex) but what can the individual website do about it. My observation is that a healthy and diverse backlink profile offers the strongest protection against this kind of ranking disturbance. Most likely this is because the site's URLs get "good marks" in a lot of areas, and that means they are included in several of those intermediate data-sets, created on the back end at Google as a record of high quality and trust in various areas.

There is some relevant discussion with useful links here [webmasterworld.com].

[gouri]

Thanks, Ted.

What you wrote is very informative and the threads that you mentioned are also helpful.