Penalised for specific term - Anyone seen this before?

[Jake_Medium]

Hit an interesting issue with one of our sites and would be good to know if anyone has seen this before or has any suggestions.

The site has quite a few pages that specifically target different competitive longtail terms and generally rank well for them. On 1st October, a proportion of these pages (perhaps 30%) completely disappeared from the SERPS for their main term, typically with another less relevant page from the site appearing significantly lower down in the SERPS instead. The pages were not de-indexed. In fact, searches for even slight variations on the main targeted term showed the page in question ranking well e.g.

- searching for "main-term-of-page" then the page formerly ranked at #1 no longer showed up in the SERPS at all
- searching for a minor variation such as "main-term-of-page-2015" and the ranking was still #1

So this seems to be some sort of algorithmic filter that is hitting a specific page for a specific competitive term only. Other similar pages on the site are completely unaffected.

There's nothing to note in Webmaster tools so clearly no manual penalty.

Some of the affected pages re-appeared within a few days and some within 2-3 weeks. Perhaps a third of the pages that disappeared still haven't come back even now.

Has anyone else seen anything similar? Anyone have any ideas?

[goodroi]

Google has a history of this and there can be different things that trigger this. I would start by checking your anchor text distribution and start thinking about over optimization.

[piatkow]

Anything on the page that could cause it to be classified as "adult"? G don't usually fall into the Scun thorpe trap these days but it doesn't hurt to check with safe search off as well.

[Jake_Medium]

Thanks for the quick replies, appreciate it.

@goodroi - Thanks a lot, some of the affected page have no external links so seems unlikely to be anchor text distribution. Over-optimization seems like the most obvious candidate and yet there are plenty of other pages on the site that have heavier keyword density that are completely unaffected.

@piatkow - Nothing adult and same issue occurs with safe search off

I did notice something interesting today though - the issue doesn't occur when searching from a country specific variant of Google e.g. do the search for the main term on google.mx or google.de and there you go - there at pos #1. So only "our" google has the filter.

[Shai]

Yes, we are battling with exactly the same thing with a client that has been affected by Penguin previously. Majority of terms have escaped but 2 or 3 terms remain stuck. Exactly how you describe. [main term] no rank but [the main term] or any [main term] + neutral word ranks perfectly. We have since discovered a few links that have not been disavowed and these have been added now to the disavow tool so it should clear after the next update.

BTW, the page is rich with content, bounce rate is at 23%, time on page is great also. (last time I checked averaged 1.5 minutes

p.s we tried changing URLs but it seems this is a term specific penalty rather than a page specific penalty so whatever page we change to, we get the exact same result.

[Jake_Medium]

@shai sorry that you're being hit by this as well but good to know that we're not alone. I searched SEO forums all over and found virtually no-one reporting similar symptoms, never mind talking about potential solutions.

Part of the problem is that it seems so arbitrary, the site has other very similar pages that managed to avoid the issue completely so its hard to diagnose what could be causing it. A few things we've tried so far (with no luck):

- reducing keyword density
- de-optimising image alt text
- de-optimising header tag content
- changing URLs
- significantly increasing the length of content
- checking that copyscape reports no duplicate content (it doesn't)

[Wilburforce]

some sort of algorithmic filter that is hitting a specific page for a specific competitive term only

A few years ago there was good evidence that Penguin was both term- and page-specific, and while I don't doubt that there are other algorithmic functions that could have the same observable effect, Penguin or something like it is a strong contender here.

Any or all of the steps you have taken might help in the longer term, but if your changes postdate 1 October it is way too soon to expect improvement, and there is also the danger that making a lot of changes that address specific keywords or phrases over a very short period of time might trigger other types of algorithmic penalty. It is better to make few small changes and wait - weeks or months, not days - both to get a clearer picture of the effect those changes are having on position, and to avoid exacerbating the problem. If you have already made all the changes you identify, I advise you not to do anything further until a much longer interval than three weeks has elapsed.

[dipper]

First step is to do a history check on what algorithms were released on or around that date. That then allows you to narrow down what the cause might be.

I know Panda was/is still rolling out .. and, from what you describe it sure sounds like a content quality problem - certain pages on a site being penalised. Given Penguin hasn't run since this time last year it's likely to not be a link based penalty (unless a manual action - check GWT for this).

[Wilburforce]

it sure sounds like a content quality problem

More likely, as Goodroi has already said, an over-optimisation issue. The key question is whether this is on-page, backlink-based, or some combination of the two. Penguin hasn't run globally for some time but is expected very soon (see e.g. Barry Schwartz this morning: [searchengineland.com ]), and it is entirely possible that it already has been or is being tested in some locations and/or sectors. This is consistent with the fact that Shai - but not anyone else in this thread yet - has seen a similar thing on a previously Penguin-affected site, that so far it is also country-specific, and that affected pages have reappeared (so it may be under local test rather than rolling out globally).

I wouldn't rule out anchor-text just because some affected pages have no external links: internal anchor-text is relevant too, especially if this intentionally forwards users from an externally-linked landing page using the same key-term.

I repeat, however, that you should look, think and evaluate rather than making too many highly term-specific changes at once, and don't make any more changes now, especially to any external links if you have control over them, as this will be the clearest possible signal to Google that you control them and are trying to manipulate the results.

[Jake_Medium]

Thanks for the comprehensive replies. The comment to take things slowly is going to be very good advice I think.

The reason we initially discounted internal anchor text is simply that around two thirds or our longtail pages are unaffected and the internal links for these mostly have exactly the same quantity/distribution/anchor text as for those pages that were affected.

[Jake_Medium]

Some interesting notes about one of the pages that disappeared and reappeared after a few days and has subsequently disappeared and reappeared in the SERPS a handful of times. I wonder if this is an indication of a page that is on the borderline of being hit by the filter, whatever it is. These dates may be useful to someone:

- 1st October - page disappeared in SERPS for main longtail term
- 7th October - page was back at the same position as before 1st Oct
- 9th November - disappeared again
- 12th November - reappeared
- 17th November - disappeared again
- 21st November - reappeared
- 25th November - disappeared again

Note that after the first instance the page disappears every 8 days.

[dipper]

... Panda! .. these dates match up with when other people (many others) started reporting rankings changes and shifts due to Panda (or content quality).

By the fluctuations I would suggest you are in the "grey zone" - fluctuating in and out of being smacked with Panda. I suggest checking Glen Gabe's posts on the topic of fortnightly ranking changes (most likely due to Panda or a content quality problem) as that might give you some more insight on the dates and can 100% confirm.

Once you know what ranking algorithm affected you, then you can plan a strategy on improving and recovering. Panda is a content quality algorithm.

[Jake_Medium]

@dipper many thanks for that, will check out Glen's posts and see how well it matches with what we're seeing