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Last month Google reported my backlinks as over 8000. I believe the exact number was 8301. Now after the last update a few days ago, my backlinks has dramatically been reduced to about 1000. There is no way I lost 7000 links in one update cycle. As a matter of fact, I actually obtained some very good links over the last month. I doubt that sites linking to me can hurt me, but something certainly happened this update…
My site is still ranking well for most of the search terms I usually do well on. However, my site used to appear top 10 for 100's of other keywords relating to specific models of widgets. After the last update, my site can not be found anywhere in the top 100 pages for a specific widget model. Sites w/ much lower PR are actually doing a lot better than my site.
I have not made any dramatic changes to my site or layout. I did add some iframes to increase functionality to my site. Also, I do have an affiliate links box on the footer of every page (like many sites). Could the iframes or off-topic affiliate links be hurting my SERP so dramatically after the last update?
My page rank has stayed the same (PR 7), but I now do terrible for many of the keywords that I used to do well on over the last few months. I certainly am not doing anything spammy, or illegal in Google's eyes. I am very confused, and would welcome some ideas.
Did I manage to trigger some sort of penalty or Google filter? Can sites linking to me hurt me in any way? I checked all the sites I link to, and most have a Toolbar PR of 3 or above. So, I am not linking to any penalized sites or bad neighborhoods. Frankly, I have not done much to my site in terms of SEO in the last few months, as I was doing pretty well. Now I am in oblivion, and I am at a loss... How did my site go from doing well w/ Google to doing very poorly when I changed nothing on my site?
Could someone have written a negative email to Google to affect my SERP? One of my competitors? How can I find out if this is the case?
Also, when searching for a specific widget in the past my site would come up as "domain.com/page.html", but now the only listings I see are "subdomain.another-domain.com/page.html". My actual domain name is not found in most of the listings for obscure terms I used to do well for (specific widget names). Rather, I see a link to a subdomain for my hosting company that links back to my site.
To wrap it up, I am not sure what to do from here. I mean If I was penalized, wouldn’t my PR have dropped?
Also, why is my site ranking so poorly for a lot of keywords I used to do really well for? I still do rank good for some 2-3 KW phrases that I have done well with in the past. It’s strange that I do very well on some phrases, but non-existent for some of the very specific KW phrases I used to do well on; there are literally 1000’s of these.
What happened during the last update that affected my site so dramatically, and where do I go from here? Anyone, please help; I am at a loss…
[edited by: Marcia at 6:37 am (utc) on Mar. 22, 2004]
The thread (and all the others on the same subject) is actually about the millions of dropped pages, lost backlinks, PR, etc. It would be nice if someone from GOOGLE could comment on this. We are witnessing a really serious problem that surely justifies an explanation.
I may be overplaying it but I don't think so. Has anyone any evidence to the contrary?
1) You had a links directory on your site linking out to sites that perhaps your users may not have been interested in
2) You had more than one site on the same topic
I think that's what got us into trouble.
I have only one site on my topic.
I have lost all my titles, descriptions, PR and traffic.
1 - Appearance to Gbot of computer-generated pages
2 - Inbound linking structure in an unnatural manner
It is a technical reference site with inbound links mainly from other sites that are involved in some kind of maintenance or reliability engineering.
Are they reciprocal or is there incestuous linking between industry players?
Are your pages template-driven / of a standard design
I don't think that's a valid point, as I still see tons of yahoo/dmoz directory listings (i.e. serps pointing directoly to a category) showing up in the serps.
Further, we have one site that is curently ranked in the top 3 for it's major jeyowrd, and it has a template-driven design, yet another site (with a much higher PR) on a completley different topic thayt is also template-driven has gone MIA (dropped about 90k pages, etc.)
So I don't think a "computer-generated" filter is the problem. After all, what's wrong with having a standardized design structure for both ease of use, and branding purposes? Not a thing.
I'm just chalking this up to some kind of glitch (granted, one that's costing us about $200-$300 per day in lose revenue), not unlike the one a few months back that sent a bunch of index pages MIA for awhile.
They are not template driven (just straight html) They do not have fake directories (if google was filtering for that, what a great way to blow your competition away)
All of our sites are for local nitch, but all over the country. So, "keyword city state" use to deliver our sites right on target. Now it delivers garbage unrelated to the search.
-s-
I don't think it's a penalty, there's just too varied sites affected by this and the only common thing happening is the drastic disappearance of backlinks (solicited/unsolicited) and eventually the loss of PR.
But since gguy is mum about this thing, I could only surmise that it is just another G glitch...an aftershock of Austin.
