Yo-yo effect and SERP drop for my blog

[job78]

Hello,

Sorry for my bad english, I'm from France, but I'm coming to you because I guess through my searches that it was one of the best webmaster forum.

My blog (Wordpress CMS) is in front of a very strange behaviour on google serp since several months : It get indexed very well and quickly (just 10 minutes after publishing new post) and makes good traffic, and suddenly Google stop indexed well and drop old posts in 2nd or 3rd page of SERP.

Second strange characteristic : certain posts get remained on the top of the SERP during the bad indexing period.

Each period (Drop, and return, and drop again) lasts 2 weeks.

I'm not a big specialist, maybe there are lot of errors on my source code or anything else, but I just need your help and your responses to specifically solve this yoyo problem.

Best regards.

[edited by: tedster at 11:40 pm (utc) on Mar 21, 2010]

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums.

If you are using Wordpress to generate the code, then your code itself is not likely to cause you problems.

What you are describing sounds like a kind of trouble that can show up for sites that do not have a good variety sites linking to them - it's the variety that makes the difference, not just the number. Of course I can't say for sure, but that's what I have noticed with sites that seem to yo-yo like that.

Google is in the middle of a major technology change that they have given the code name "Caffeine". There is an ongoing discussion about this in this thread: Google Updates and SERP Changes - March 2010 [webmasterworld.com].

There is a lot of unusual symptoms going on for many sites, and there is also a chance your site is caught up in some of that lack of stability. Still, a greater variety of backlinks is always a good thing, and often helps site escape many kinds of ranking problems.

You may also want to look through our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page. There you will find many of our best discussions and that may also give you some ideas.

[abacuss]

I can understand the drop in rankings and change in the return period, but I am totally in a spot when you say that your posts get renamed. How can you post get renamed?

[job78]

Hello !
Thanks for replies and for your help !
Tedster : I've begun to read your documentation, very interested.
Abacuss : No, certain of my posts get remained = stay on the top of the serp (and not "get renamed") ;)
Don't know if I can employ the term "remain" for what I want to say, I'm not very good in english :)

[abacuss]

Job78: Ah! got it now.

[tedster]

When your URLs are ranking well, are toward the bottom of the first page? ...or are they top 3?

[job78]

When my URLs are ranking well, there are at the top of the first page (very very impressive indexing), and when there is the ranking problem, even if you tape a very specific title of a page, my page is under others pages which are less pertinent (and my old indexed optimal keywords drop from the first result or the first page to the 2nd or 3rd page).

[job78]

Okey, I have 2 another informations which maybe will interest you.

First, 'Google Suggest' don't want to suggest the name of my blog when I tape it on the search box, but It suggest 6 alternative names (which are specific to my blog name, e.g. my blog name trunked or with another syntax). It doesn't want to suggest exactly my blog name. Is it a relative blacklist ?
I've made some searches and I've found that the only websites that are not suggested by google (excepted little sites) are the adult websites...

Secondly, after realise the first point, I decided to "clean" my blog from possibly spam comments, adult content or link, etc... and I remebered that I've had on certain pages (just 10 or 15 very old articles) some affiliate links to adult site. I've now deleted its.

Are these informations good for my problem ? Causes of my problems, according to you ?
What can I make to let Google rehabilitate my blog like a normal site ? And to let it suggest its name on search box (and not alternative names or "truncate" name as it makes now), displayed the "Google Site Links" (which has disepperead since several months), and not play yoyo with my ranks and keywords ? (7 000 keywords on good period, 1 800 on bad period, according to Google Analytis...).

[tedster]

Google Search Suggestions are related to commonly made searches, rather than to sites themselves. Normally, not seeing a domain name in the suggestions means not many people type that name directly into search.

I haven't studied the search suggestions well enough to say if there is any kind of "blacklist" effect in play for a site that has a penalty.

The clean-up steps you describe are good to take - especially the spam content. However, one affiliate link should not be a cause of a penalty, even if it points to an adult site.

[job78]

Thousand thanks Tedster, and others. Your tips help me in my investigations.
For Google Suggest, I'm sure that there is a specific blacklist for terms (adult or obscenes terms). Furtermore, I'm quasi sure (but I don't know why because my blog name is very normal) that my blog has been blacklisted of Google Suggest, because there are many people in FR that type the name blog (popular site), and all alternative names that google suggest concern only the blog...

Than, I have maybe a last idea for the reason of the Yoyo-effect, but only you experts can say if it would be a main cause of my problems. I'm using an extern 'related posts' widget (can I say in the forum the name of the service which offer this tool for free ?). This widget manage related posts instead of me (better for charge servor), but when the visitor click on a related post, it's taking him on a redirection which lead him on the site of related post service, to finally reach the related post of my blog...

I have difficulties to explain the system in english because it's not my tongue, but I can say that in my related posts, there is a redirection to another site.

Note : this widget is a javascript code :

"script src = ***.com/widget.js"

And the URL is in this form (I've put *** instead of site name) :
widget.******.com/redirect?url=http%3A//******/&vars=%5B%22http%3A//******/%22%2C%2070491%2C%200%2C%20%22http%3A//******/%22%2C%20null%2C%200%2C%2017331403%5D&ts=126...
I've just deactivate it. Should I ?