Some ranking drops are Google's mistake - pure and simple

[tedster]

Recently there were two instances in the Google Forums, both confirmed by a Google employee called "TheJack", where a ranking drop for a site was caused by an internal error at Google - a mistake that "misclassified" the domain.

Even if it's a rare occurrence, this stuff does happen and it's disturbing for sure. And according to TheJack, in some cases, if you are having issues with your rankings, it's best to post them at Google's forums. That just doesn't work for me at all. I would still hope that a Reconsideration Request can do the job.

Google Misclassifying Some Sites As Parked Domains & Booting Them From Search Results? [seroundtable.com]

[tedster]

This is, as I said, a rather rare occurrence - but it can happen so it's good to keep in mind when you really have turned over every stone and can find no reason for a rankings drop.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

These are very rare occurrences so best thing for folks to do is to post here ....

Is this another business strategy targeting the forums business/websites and directing the traffic to their own site(s)?

[tedster]

I don't see it that way. First, it's a public admission of failure in the Google algorithm - a real loss of face. And I don't see what financial good it does Google to have more forum traffic to a free forum that offers free support from Google employees whose resources could be put to other uses.

And if you follow those threads, even after thejack answers, there is some pretty vocal criticism being hurled at Google. So the public embarrassment is continued.

[Andylew]

Nice post tedster, that is very interesting. I love the way he put at the end it only affect that single site - what are the chances of that! Probablity suggests on a google scale it is impossible for an algo bug to affect just one site.

A little worying that he said it would be fixed in a couple of weeks then corrected himself later in the thread saying it would take longer - it must be a fairly big bug for that to be the case.

[karter]

Guys all Algorithims have errors, and where an algorithim computes over gadzillions of data structure like google does, its bound to gagg on at least some it should not gag on.

I've been programming some search devices an they are,,,

And yes, they'll never know about it unless someone tells them

This is bizzare, me defending google, oh dear :)

By the way, the parked domain scripts get cleverer all the time, so,,,,,

[ron15]

Bugs occasionally exist that work to increase rankings as well.

In 2007 I operated a forum for a discussion of a particular city market. One day I was looking at my logs and noticed tremendous amounts of traffic from Google to a post discussing a news story that was unrelated to any topic of my forum. Thousands of hits every hour. I ran the search term on Google and came back in number 1 spot, above CNN and other news sites. I had no right to be there, it did not make sense. It had to be a bug. The traffic lasted just over 24 hrs, before it dropped like a rock and I was buried in the SERP's, like I should have been from the start.

[aristotle]

What would be the reaction if some big site like Wikipedia or Amazon accidentally got reclassified as a parked page?

[Planet13]

Thank you for bringing this up, Tedster:

I am quite the cynic though (my wife says i am just stupid, but that's another story), so I am a little suspicious of the supposed google employee known as "thejack."

I do see on the google forum posts his level IS listed as a google employee, but I think most employees who actually partake in the forum use their real names (or an abbreviation thereof) and have a photo avatar.

Also, my warning radar came on when I noticed that he (or she) had only been a member of the forum since July of this year. This made me wonder why someone like JohnMu or Laura (don't know her full handle) didn't respond instead of the newbie

So while I would never doubt the technical perfection of anything google would do, their is this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that "Le Jaques" may not be quite as legit as we initially thought...

[tedster]

If that's true, Google would be all over the fake employee account - the post is getting a lot of attention. I think we're just looking at a division of labor.

[CainIV]

Even if it's a rare occurrence...

And how would one know if the occurrence is rare or not, considering all of the websites in Google that experience wild drops or fluctuations?