Ranking drop - have I accidentally spammed with my new alt tags?

[CrazyBigGaz]

Hi,

I added a 3 alt tags yestarday to 3 images on my frontpage, and when I check today I have drop position on 2 keywords.

Yestarday I was on page 3 or 4 but today I am on page 14 or 15 for one keyword
For another keyword I was on page 13 or 14 but now on page 21 or 22

The drop has happened on google.com and google.co.uk
Could I have accidently spammed Google due tot he alt tags on my frontpagee, for such a drop?

Today I changed the alt keywords to something else and put some text back to how it was yestarday.

Should I just wait and see how it goes for a few days to a week, or should I contact Google?

Thanks

[crobb305]

I have observed sensitivity when tweaking alts, headers, title, and description. It makes me nervous to change anything. Typically, I always recovered after a period of time (on the order of a few days or a week).

[CrazyBigGaz]

It could be that then.

As I did make a very small change to the description two words had a capitial starting them so, I change them to lowercase.

The 3 alt tags was added yestarday, before they wasn't there.

I also made a change to the 301 redirect for my parked domains, as they wasn't 100% right.

Thanks

[enigma1]

Just make sure each alt tag describes the image - in case you're trying to weigh over the page content as general term.

[lucy24]

Is it black heresy to suggest that position isn't everything? That is, if you change something that drops you down a few places, but the change results in a higher proportion of visitors-- especially if they're visitors who do what your site wants them to do-- then you've gained in the long run.

Hokey real-life example: I once did an e-text of a picture book whose characters included a rooster. It was printed in the 19th century, so it did not use the word "rooster". But that is the word I put in all the alts. There are a lot of illustrations, so using the book's one-syllable word in the alts would probably have had a dramatic effect on search results. But the people performing that particular search wouldn't be looking for a picture book. And I doubt they'd say "Well, as long as I'm here..."

Adjust the details of the preceding paragraph to fit your particular situation.

[tedster]

I also made a change to the 301 redirect for my parked domain

That sounds like a much more sensitive change than the alt tags. Google is very cautious about redirects, and trust checking 301 changes can take an extended period of time - with extended ranking impacts until they are convinced no gaming is involved.

[Robert Charlton]

I also made a change to the 301 redirect for my parked domains

Yes, this also jumped out at me as I was reading down this thread. Roughly how many of these domains had been previously promoted... ie, had been live, acquired backlinks, and currently have those backlinks pointing to them?

[CrazyBigGaz]

Thanks for all the replies :)

The 301 redirect change was to fix a problem.
parked-domain.com to main-domain.com worked fine.

The problem was parked-domain.com/faq.php was not redirecting, to main-domain.com/faq.php

Which is now fixed.

I did noticed that my .co.uk parked domain had been listed in Google, that why I changed it and, it looks like it starting to be dropped from Google.