WMT Links to your website and Index status dropped horrible

[comehereall]

I used to have over 200 "Links to your website" now i have only 1, and i used to have over 20k url indexed now i have 11,269.

This decline is from a month ago when i installed on my wordpress "Yoast SEO".

Does anybody has ideea why my "Links to your website" and "Index Status" dropped?

[netmeg]

No, but I doubt it has anything to do with Yoast's plugin. I use that on all my sites and have never had a problem with it.

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, comehereall.

Have you had any loss in traffic or ranking since seeing these changes in WMT? It is worth noting that Google Webmaster Tools is often buggy.

[lucy24]

Google Webmaster Tools is often buggy.

:: shuffling papers ::
May 2011 [webmasterworld.com]
February 2013 [webmasterworld.com] (I particularly remember this one, because when the numbers came back, they showed all the same garbage links that had been listed before)
last month [webmasterworld.com] (that one wasn't a bug, it really was a plugin doing something dreadful)

There are probably lots more; those are just the first few search results. There's also a longish thread about internal vs. external links.

[comehereall]

No, the traffic is the same, and my rank change +/- 1k.. i mean is stable.

But when these dropped also page rank dropped is "0" now...

I don't know whats happen.

[aakk9999]

I would keep monitoring traffic and ranking. From what you are saying, they have been stable even though the number of links shown has dropped a month ago. I would have thought that if the site had problem, you would by now see changes in traffic and ranking.

This is why I am more inclined to believe it is some kind of Google bug.

[comehereall]

I've run on my website a filehost which allow to my traffic to download files. And there are some changes. This week i have less downloads than previous weeks.

I don't know what to believe because my index status has start to dropping a month ago. I attached a screenshot below (sorry if isn't allowed)

<snip>
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 10:48 am (utc) on Dec 14, 2013]
[edit reason] Too many links to highly commercial ads on image hosting site. [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: I removed the link to the WMT screen capture (graphing total urls indexed) because of many commercial links from image-hosting site.

and i used to have over 20k url indexed now i have 11,269

The removed graph bears this out... shows drop from 21,198 urls indexed on 11/3/13 to 11,269 urls indexed on approximately 12/13/13. Note that if there had been a canonicalization problem with "www" and "no-www", resulting in essentially duplicate urls for each page, and the Yoast plugin fixed this, the canonicalization fix would explain the drop.

One question I would ask is whether WMT is set up to report on both www and non-www versions of site.

I'd also ask whether proper 301 redirect is in place between www and non-www... whichever way has been selected as the canonical (I'm guessing here that this might have been done)... and whether the version selected as a canonical is in fact the version that was receiving the most inbound links.

[comehereall]

I guess you are right, i've changed from www to non-www some time ago, and WMT is set-up to report only on www version. I couldn't verify till today the non-www version.

[comehereall]

"Yoast plugin fixed this" so you think that Yoast plugin is a good thing for my website right ?

[comehereall]

@Robert Charlton

Thanks for the solution, i found the problem now. I was using WMT for the www version, and my website is no-www version. Thats why all things was dropping like hell.

off-topic: About Yoast SEO pluggin do you guys think that is a good SEO service?

[comehereall]

And a last question, what is better choice?

To change back to www version or to stay with no-www ?
I mean on www version i do have indexed links, but i guess on no-www there are indexed but is not showing in the WMT because wasn't verified as no-www.
Any opinion are welcomed...

I've see no edit function that's why i left so many replies. Sorry

[netmeg]

We're not supposed to review tools here, but I use that plugin and it works well for me, but (like everything) it does need to be properly configured, so make sure you do your research on how to set it correctly for your site.

As far as www vs non-www; probably go with whatever works with your branding and whichever brings in more traffic.

When I have older sites that have been www for a long time, I leave them www, but any newer sites I am dropping the www.

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: I'm OK with that specific tool mention, as it was in the OP of the thread and integral to the discussion. It's an extremely well known Wordpress plugin.

[comehereall]

Thanks for everything guys, this discussion was very helpful to me.