Our site fell from #1 to #9 - after 5 years in the top 3

[eznav]

Hi,
Our website has stayed in top 3 of google organic search results consistently for the past 5 years. It is a content site with very unique content and 1000s of pages of useful and unique information.

Suddenly starting about 10-15 days ago, our position has dropped from #1 to #9. As a result the # of visitors has decreased by 30%. We heavily depend on the ad revenue to keep the website updated and new content added by hiring content writers (engineers). So this has drastically affected revenue and ability to pay content developers to grow the website.

Any thoughts about why this sudden drop and anything that can be done to improve the ranking would be much appreciated.

[edited by: tedster at 4:42 am (utc) on Apr 22, 2011]

[tedster]

Hello eznav, and welcome to the forums.

The time frame you describe (10-15 days ago) lines up rather well with the second part of Google's recent Panda Update (also called the "Farm" or "Farmer" update) and that was one of the most dramatic change in the ranking algorithm we've ever seen.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not (the forum is jam packed with discussions about the Panda Update right now), but Google tells us that this new algorithm component was in development for over a year. Essentially, in addition to measuring relevance, for the first time the algorithm is also purposed to measure "quality" - in particular to lower rankings for pages that have what users perceive as "shallow content".

The Google engineers have given us a few clues about what that means. In particular, there was a lot of talk about too many ads on the page - especially above the fold - that overwhelm the actual content.

Another strong theme the Google staff offered was content that is not really original but merely a copy or a "spun" rewrite of content that is available on other sites. This one has frustrated a lot of people because they are seeing copies of their own content ranking well, while their original page is demoted.

The good news is that a few webmasters are now reporting a bit of recovery. The bad news is that we're still not sure of anything - it's just too soon.

Does any of this ring a bell for you?

[Planet13]

Hi there, eznav:

Are the sites that are now ranking above you using content that they have stolen (scraped) from other sites? Or do the sites that rank above you also have lots of unique content?

Also, how many backlinks (and what kinds of sites are they from) do you have compared to the sites that now rank above you?

[eznav]

Hi tedster, Thanks for the info, we do have several ads above fold. By ads, do you mean only google ads or would ads managed by us directly from sponsors matter? I wouldn't think google has any means of tracking ads that we publish directly from sponsors? How many ads do you think above fold would be acceptable? We have about google 3 ads above fold, one on the very top, then one in the middle of page and one in the center of the navigation pane. Any recommendations?

Planet13, The sites above us seem to be some unique & some copied content (may not be from our website). There are some small sites not even half the number of pages or articles we have that are above us. I'm not sure how I would check the backlink for sites above us, but our site has "Total links : 151,181" according to Google webmaster tools.

[tedster]

By ads, do you mean only google ads or would ads managed by us directly from sponsors matter?

Any ad - in fact, any element at all that is not the page's essential content. It's not that there's a taboo about having ads, but there is a negative judgment about ads that dominate the page content.

The best place I'd look for direction is the newly written Adsense guidelines - published yesterday: Best practices for laying out your site and your ads [google.com].