Ranking Oddity - major drop in main kws, rise in longtail

[Simsi]

Hey guys

Trying to get to the bottom of an odd one. On 5th March, a site I run experienced a major drop off in Google for its 3 main keyword phrases - not overly competitive ones either. Went from Top 10 to 500+ on all three. However, the longtail terms for deep pages remained the same and since then some have even risen.

Anyone seen this before? The main 3 keyword phrases have been floating between 800 and 400 ever since that date and at one point even dropped out the Top 1000 altogether, albeit only for a couple of days.

I keep an audit trail of changes and the only obvious thing I could think of was that I added contextual links on inner pages back to the homepage a week or so before this happened (along with internal links to other pages that continue to rank). However, a week after the drop I regressed this change just in case, but 6 weeks on it hasn't made any difference.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Simsi

[tedster]

From time to time over the past 6 to 8 months different members have reported this same oddity. Normally I don't suspect anything the site changed - rather I suspect some kind of change at Google, but I haven't seen enough data to pin it down.

However, if you mean you added keyword links from internal pages back to the Home Page, where previously the links just said "Home", that has been know to trigger a penalty. 6 weeks might seem a long time to recover after a reversion - but maybe Google is giving a time-released penalty, just like in ice hockey?

[Simsi]

Thanks Tedster. As for the internal links, there has always been a straightforward "Home" link in the sidebar, but my change meant that in addition, the first occurence of "Caramel Widget" on each page changed back into a homepage link.

It seems odd that they would only penalise the home page though.

[Simsi]

A bit of a development. Yahoo joined in the party and dropped the main term from a painstakingly slowly-obtained Top 30 position all the way back down to #162 the other evening. Something weird going on but makes me think it may not be a penalty after all. Checked the code but that validates fine.

[sahm]

My site has ranked in the top five results for my main (non-competitive) keyword for years. It has been consistently #5 for at least a year. In the past couple of weeks, it is bouncing all over the place, anywhere from #10 to #26. It has even disappeared (quit looking after a couple of pages of results) a couple of times. I have never seen this happen before. My long tail traffic has increased slightly in the same time period, and earnings have gone up. I have not made any changes to the site.

[tedster]

sahm, that is a very interesting report to me. The "trophy" rankings are down but longtail traffic is up and so are your revenues. I'm wondering if that is something of Google's intention. As the web grows, there are stil only 10 numbers from 1 to 10 on any trophy phrase. So part of their job would be making more sites available - keeping the results interesting for their end users. Or so goes my idea of the moment, anyhow.

[kidder]

I have one site that has been in position 1 - 2 for a few years now, I never do any linking or updating because its main term is an exact match domain name, its never ever dipped. This week its doing funky things in the AU rankings, dropping for its main terms down as far as page two. I think its a dirty batch of data that needs to work through to be honest.

[sahm]

So part of their job would be making more sites available - keeping the results interesting for their end users. Or so goes my idea of the moment, anyhow.

This was my thinking also. In my case, all of the sites ranking above mine are on topic and deserve to be there. My site is older, bigger, and has more links pointing to it than any of the other sites, which is why it ranked in the top 5 for so long. Now that Google is switching things around, smaller newer sites that also have useful information are now appearing in the top 5. It is fine with me, the long tail traffic more than makes up for it, and those sites don't compete with me for that other traffic.

[Simsi]

Now that Google is switching things around, smaller newer sites that also have useful information are now appearing in the top 5.

As a generalisation, I really hope this is the way things are going. If true then of course, it begs the question what has Google done to make it feel more confident that it can tell apart good content? User behaviour? That would tie in with the swapping around of positions people are seeing more of. All seems very logical and sensible to me. If.

If my ranking has dropped 400 places because of content quality then I am happy with that. Although I doubt it personally. But at least it puts me in control of my own destiny and alleviates the need to join the rat race gaming Google by acquiring links.