All rankings in Google lost in 2 days

[mridubhattacharya]

I have lost all my rankings in Google suddenly.

In Sep 2013, my site was under Google's manual spam, so we removed all our back links to get out of the spam, we disavowed all links which we were unable to remove. We cam out of the manual spam but at that time too we had many links in the footer of our client's websites saying "Design & developed by us". These links were repeated in their internal pages too. But since we disavowed all those links, probably we got out of manual spam successfully.

As per the webmaster our links numbers has been following -

nov 139849
dec 136372
jan 124776
feb 134089
mar-apr 148410

so as per the webmaster report, links generated after getting off the manual spam
856 1inks in 5 months

Although we have not tried to exchange or buy links at all. We do some off page work in the following number per month -

Guest post 4
PDF writing 4
Site Blog writing 4
External Blog writing 5
PR writing 1

And we do not put more than 1 link in any content.

We had been ranking fine in the beginning of April. Then we changed the look of our home page a little, say header & footer.

In last week I notice some drop but it was fluctuating. Till Friday night, I could see that the keywords were ranking. Yesterday night when I check them, I saw a major drop on all keywords. everything that was ranking on first two pages are nowhere to be seen in 100 listings.

Is there any recent penguin update? I'm re-analyzing my links.

Does Google remove the disavow requests after sometime and start counting all disavowed links as normal links?

Could there be any other issue than links.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:24 am (utc) on Apr 28, 2014]

[aristotle]

Based on the information you've provided, it would be hard for anyone to identify the specific cause of your recent rankings drops. You said "We cam out of the manual spam", then in another sentence said "But since we disavowed all those links, probably we got out of manual spam successfully." So it's not clear if or when the manual penalty was lifted. If you know for sure that it was lifted, you should tell us when it was lifted.

You also said "we removed all our back links to get out of the spam, we disavowed all links which we were unable to remove". But later you indicated that you are currently building new backlinks through guest posting, PR writing, etc.

As to your questions, no recent Penguin updates have been reported. Also, as far as anyone knows, disavowed links are permanently disavowed unless you submit a new list that doesn't include them. And yes, there could be issues other than backlinks.

We see many reports here of sites suddenly suffering a drastic drop in rankings. In many of these cases, the specific cause is never identified. From what I've read, Google sometimes sends a message of explanation through Webmaster Tools, but usually doesn't.

[mridubhattacharya]

The manual spam was lifted in November 2013. Yes, we were building new links but at very slow pace to get rankings. If this is bad, I can have them removed and stop this practice, but not sure how I shall rank, as we are a highly competitive industry.

[mridubhattacharya]

I have noticed that my rankings are still fluctuating, essentially dropping and a few coming up, however all my pages which were ranking are now changed with other irrelevant landing pages.

Could this be a page wise or domain wise penalty?

[aristotle]

Have you used the same anchor text in a lot of the links you've built, as a way to try to rank higher for specific terms? That can cause your site to be penalized for those same terms.

[mridubhattacharya]

Well I have recently updated my top navigation by adding links to more internal pages, and yes this was repeated in all internal pages with same anchor text. This was not an effort to rank better, but I was trying to make the navigation better for the users.

However today I have removed the new top navigation from all internal pages and have done a "Fetch Google". I can see the effect tomorrow only.

I hope that it would come out of penalty. In any case I would report my findings here.

[not2easy]

Internal links normally have the same anchor text, if it helped visitors find your content more easily I would not take that out. It depends on whether it was redundant.

Every page should have a link, but they don't need to have links on every page. It depends on your site, but I would think that a site with so many thousands of links must be a very large site with tens of thousands of pages. Try to categorize and manage internal linking into categories.

[samwest]

I think you can jump in the boat with a LOT of other webmasters. It appears Google is pulling yet another greed move by pushing out all relevant sites with ad packed and ad network pals. That's how they make 168 Million per day while we scratch for crumbs. In 2010 I was making 100k /year on my site. It's less than half that now and dropping fast, along with everyone else. The gold rush is over, Google figured out where the gold is...ads.

In April my Search Queries went from 6,000 to 1,000. Might as well fold up shop after a dozen years.

[Sand]

Here's the flipside: One of my sites just went from 64 hourly Google visits in the 1:00 PM hour (EST) to 450+ visits in the 3:00 PM hour, to 500+ visits in the 4:00 PM hour.

I don't know what's going on, but I've never seen hour over hour increases at this level before.

[mridubhattacharya]

It appears Google is pulling yet another greed move by pushing out all relevant sites with ad packed and ad network pals.

My site do not have any ads.

[not2easy]

@mridubhattacharya - samwest could clarify, but it looks to me like he was not saying your site has ads, he was saying that relevant sites are being pushed out and replaced with ad packed sites.

[mridubhattacharya]

Thanks "not2easy", probably I misunderstood the statement of samwest. My apologies to him.

Just to update we have found two sites giving 8k back links to our site. These are our client sites developed in April and they are backlinking us from their footer. we have submitted an updated disavow list to include these sites, and have asked them to remove our link too.

If this be the case for our drop, how soon can we start ranking again?

[Planet13]

"but not sure how I shall rank, as we are a highly competitive industry."

That's easy!

Have a highly-competitive value proposition.

If you are significantly cheaper, better, faster, then you will rank better.

If you aren't, then you have to ask yourself; "WHY exactly SHOULD google rank us better than our competition?"

If your answer is, "Because we build a handful of links each month in places where google has said NOT to build links," then you have a problem.

[mridubhattacharya]

we are ranking back now that we removed those thousands of links from our client's sites.

but going by Planet13, my concern is what practices should i use to rank better. my competitor is building links and ranking better than me.

all of us provide same services in same spectrum.

[not2easy]

At some point, if your competitors are "building links" they will find out how google treats unnatural links. To make sure you stay ahead of the competition, look at whatever ways your business is different from theirs, what makes your site or your business better than theirs? If they are both exactly the same, look for ways you could improve.

For example, if they only offer one payment option or one shipping option and your company offers more than one, make that a prominent point in your sales copy, the text about your business or products. Think about some additional service that could be added as a free or low cost benefit (maybe a year-end report for example) that makes your offer more attractive.

Tell people what sets your business above the others. In the long run if you solve a problem or go the extra step for customers, you are more likely to do better online. Customers tell others about good products and services - they also tell others about bad experiences with businesses.