one url drops from page 1 to out of top 100

[socialengaged]

hi webmasters
did anyone notice something strange those days? here's what happened to one page i was building for my client:

i made a great page for <red widgets>. it ranked page 3 in google. then i made the page better. and i built just a couple of links. those links were discovered by google on april 11th and 16th. then i built another link (still not discovered, neither the page with the link indexed in google).

until april 25th the page was still ranking in 1th google page. then, since 2 days, page disappeared completely. i know google does some ctr tests.

may this be the case? i dont see the page now in the top 200 results. but the page is still indexed, and if i do one site: or if i do a branded search with target keyword + brand, i still rank n. 1.

any suggestion why this could happen?
did anyone experience something similar?

thanks
e

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:28 am (utc) on Apr 28, 2016]
[edit reason] exemplified keywords, per forum Charter [/edit]

[Andy Langton]

Cause and effect is difficult to pin down, because Google is obviously changing things independently of your own activities.

That said, it would make sense to loko closely at changes you've made. What type of links did you create, for instance?

A huge drop in rankings would almost always indicate that you did something wrong as far as Google is concerned. But that isn't necessarily something that happened closely to when the rankings dropped, unfortunately.

[Robert Charlton]

Possibly also, Google may have detected that you'd built the links,or at least that they didn't look natural... but Google may or may not have been sure that your intent was artificial or manipulative . It might have just been a coincidence that the anchor text matched your desired keywords exactly ;) ... or that the links came in quick succession. (This is hypothetical, but a guess suggested by the ranking drops).

Let's say that the links did look artificial, and Google decided to drop your rankings way down to see how you might react. Further fiddling with the links could confirm manipulative intent, and you might be penalized futher. The first drop, though, might not be a penalty, but just a test to see what you do. I hope that this quick description is clear.

There's a Google patent on the topic Take a look at this discussion, which goes into it in depth. It's not certain, btw, that the patent has been implemented, but from what I've seen, I think that it has been. I of course don't know enough about what you've done to know whether the links looked spammy, which could be what triggered the large ranking drop.

Google's Rank Modifying Patent for Spam Detection
Aug 18, 2012
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4486158.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[Walt Hartwell]

I agree that it is difficult to itemize exactly what the cause of your drop would be due to you making both on-page changes and off page linking. There is also Google randomness to consider.

With that said, I've always seen a drop in rankings for a page after adding links to that page. If a page has hundreds of links already, adding a few inbound links probably won't be noticeable. If, as in your case, a page has none or very little inbound links, adding links usually creates a drop followed by a slow rise to above the previous position.

My recommendation would be to leave the page and the links alone for a couple of weeks and let things settle down. If you have better rankings in a few weeks, then your changes were beneficial. If not, then you evaluate your process so you do not repeat the mistake.

FWIW, I don't usually use the "get links with keyword anchor text to boost rankings" approach, I prefer a more diversified approach for the whole site.

[socialengaged]

thanks all for replies! google is getting smarter every day with links.
i will leave the page for a while and see what happens. in the case i dont see improvements, what do you think about getting the content to another brand new url, with no redirect of the old url? the content is awsome, it deserves people to see that page, as it really satisfies user needs.
thanks again for your precious support!