Site is not ranking for its own URLs

[bugmenot]

Hi,

So, there's a problem going on right now with one of my sites that got hit after the Nov 18th Core update. The thing is, my site is only ranking for non-English results, Before the update everything was fine.

It was ranking very well on English results also. Even if I put my URL into google search directly in English, they won't show any results but if I change the location to any other non-english country, It is shown.

I never used hreflang tags, the site is in EN-US English. URLs are also fine, the site is crawlable, Indexed, and can be found with brand anchors and other keywords.

Does anyone know what's happening here?

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], bugmenot!

is this site using a ccTLD?

[bugmenot]

Nope, It's an English site with a .com domain. It used to rank well in Tier 1 countries but not now.

[not2easy]

Are you seeing any indicators in GSC - things to fix that might help explain?

How is your site doing with the new Page Experience update? That started in January: [webmasterworld.com...] and has a Dedicated Desktop Section in Page Experience Report out now: [webmasterworld.com...]

[bugmenot]

Nothing to fix in GSC

Regarding Page Experience update - Everything is good and in Green!

NOTE: Yes the website was hit with the Nov 18th core Update and this problem started there.

Url's ranking on EU sites and not tier 1 ones. I personally believe it's some sort of a bug or filter applied to the site which is preventing it to rank for its own URLs.

Content quality is good, Only 2 pages on the whole website were hit which were having over 80% of tier 1 traffic. One more strange thing, these 2 pages started gaining ranks on EU immediately.

So with the Update, It got hit on tier 1 countries but on the other hand, gained top 3 rankings on non-english speaking countries. But why it suddenly disappeared in English countries and performed well in non-English countries is still a mystery for me.

[not2easy]

Did you have targeting set in GSC? When you search, are you using Google while logged in to your account? Have you tried other search engines to see how they compare? Have you tired searches from other browsers? I ask because there have been differences observed in various threads around here.

[bugmenot]

Yes I have done that, I have other guys confirm it too, tracking is gone off the radar

No targeting settings in GSC

[NickMNS]

It is possible that the Nov18 update only applied to English language queries, thus you only see a drop in ranking in English queries and non-English traffic remains unaffected.

[bugmenot]

I don't think so, Because, before the update, Only tier 1 countries were ranking in the top 10. No EU country was not even in the top 50. But after the update, The rankings got swapped.

One more thing happened, All the rankings on tier 1 countries actually lost positions and most of them started ranking as image site links in the top 100. I analyzed the whole effect and found that if the site is searched with the URLs itself on google, It doesn't show any results not even with the root URL. But if the URLs are searched in Non-English countries, it shows site results.

[NickMNS]

Where are your ranking number coming from?

[bugmenot]

Ahrefs, Tracking tools, manually checking them, Semrush, etc?

If I get you right?

[NickMNS]

Yes that is correct.

You talk about ranking.

my site is only ranking for non-English results...
It was ranking very well ...
It used to rank well...
The rankings got swapped...

What "ranking" are you referring to exactly? What source of data are you basing these statements on?

Are you referring to the "average position" reported in GSC or some "ranking" in a 3rd party tool like Ahrefs or SemRush?

Has there been an impact on actual traffic to the site, has it dropped in step with the "ranking". Are the traffic patterns the same?

[bugmenot]

When I say rankings, I mean, Ahfrefs, Semrush, Keyword tracking tools, Sistrix, Manually checking keyword positions, GSC, Google Analytics everything.

Yes, there has been an actual impact on the traffic, 80% of the traffic in tier 1 countries like the US, the UK was lost and at the same time, I started getting EU traffic.

So you can say, tier 1 traffic got replaced by tier 2 traffic? Strange but it does happen.

Before the update, I was not ranking on EU countries.

I don't know why I don't show up in search results when I search even with my root URL.

[bugmenot]

Anyone else knows what's happening here?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

On the 19th of Nov I did see one site lose traffic in a semi-relatable way but it didn't lose ranking, it lost featured snippets, all of them in one shot.

At the same time it got a boost in traffic from an area where english is not the primary language but is also spoken. A real head scratcher.

It ended up being user experience related. An anchor ad had turned the mobile version into a semi fixed-width version which triggered side-scrollbars.

It took 3 weeks to get any snippets back and 5 weeks to fully recover. In your case if your url does not appear and you don't have a noindex tag or header response your first stop should be in your Search Console. ON A PER PAGE level did rankings actually drop? Impressions? Clicks from search?

It's hard to tell what you're seeing without more data. Don't go making a bunch of changes until you evaluate all the data you have and when you do start making changes give them a bit of time for Google to re-crawl. It can take weeks to figure these things out sometimes, good luck.

[bugmenot]

Whatever you said is exactly the same here, lost all featured snippets, lost rankings on 2 of my main pages in tier 1 countries but got an immediate boost on non-english countries.

On GSC, yes impressions, clicks, traffic all dropped on 2 of the main pages which were driving all the traffic but that was only in English countries. So rankings dropped on US, UK, AU, CA but got the same impressions, traffic compensated with the EU traffic like RO, Albania, Poland, Germany.

I have already made some changes because the site was hit on Nov 18th lol. Can you share more info?

How much that site has recovered and what steps has been taken, other than User Experience, i am too scratching my head.

[not2easy]

Is there a reason you are not targeting US in GSC if you are hoping for US traffic? I've never thought it was a major signal but it can't hurt.

No targeting settings in GSC

[bugmenot]

You see, my site is a global site to be precise, I want traffic from everywhere but my main targets are tier 1 countries.

Having EU traffic is good for me but that traffic at cost of tier 1's is not what i look for.

[RedBar]

Five questions:

1. How old is the site?
2. Which domaun extension are you using .com/net/org?
3. Where is the site hosted?
4. In which country is the main business registered?
5. In your legal is it clear in which country you are located?

[bugmenot]

2 Yeards Old, .com, US, It's an Independent tech, Gaming site.

[bugmenot]

Any more recommendations?

[not2easy]

I don't know why I don't show up in search results when I search even with my root URL.

If searching using the actual URL returns other results it may indicate that your basic site canonical URL is not the only home page for that domain and that Google sees a different version as your preferred domain. If the site can be visited using various versions that can happen.

For example, if you can visit the domain at http://example.com/ and https://www.example.com/ or https://example.com and see the same domain then Google might choose a different version than the one you prefer just because it exists.

I doubt that is the case or you would have had indications before 2 years that something needed attention. I only posted this because it is one possibility. I should also note that I have never searched for any site using the actual URL because if I have that I can paste and go - so it might be that Google thinks you must want to find something else? Do you see any different results if you are logged in to your GSC account or not? Same results on different machines/devices that do not hold your history?

[bugmenot]

I can confirm, all the URLs are redirecting properly to the preferred version i.e https://www.example.com/

Canonical is also set. Yes, I agree no one searches with the URLs, but its a strong indicator if I am not ranking for my own URLs that some is definitely wrong.

"Do you see any different results if you are logged in to your GSC account or not? Same results on different machines/devices that do not hold your history?"

Yes it is the same case, I would have ignored this, but the thing is, My rankings disappeared on 2 of my most traffic pages.

[not2easy]

Do you find your content on the results that you get when searching for those high traffic pages? I mean, if your own sites are not in the results, visit the results that you get and see whether your content has been copied or framed there?

[bugmenot]

Nope. It's something else which i just can't figure out.

[bugmenot]

To all those who tried to help me out, deeply appreciated but the problem is still there, Does anyone else have any IDEA what's happening in my case?

[bugmenot]

So I want to add some more info here as the problem is still there. Hoping someone will reply!

So 1 week before the November 18th core update, I did change most of the categories to tags as I was using multiple categories per post. Everything was good until the Nov 18th update when I started losing rankings. So is the update done something or the changes I made might be the reason. I did all the redirects through and made sure they worked.

One more thing, It's only happening on ENGLISH results. Everything is good on the Non-English search - Keywords ranking, URLs showing up on the search, etc.

[bugmenot]

UPDATE: So after 8 months and getting thrashed again in May update, finally, the site recovered fully, All the issues relating to keywords not ranking in the US, Branded search everything recovered. I did disavow spammy links like blogpost but not sure whether it was the reason behind the fall

[RedBar]

Cingratulations are in order :-)

[tangor]

Happy Endings are always nice.

Yet; there still seems to be no reason for the original problem, other than g seems to have been involved.