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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]
Just lost a bunch of sites thanks. (Politely declines offer)
Just wanted to reiterate that our lost sites fall into the following category:
1) PR on Home page but 0 on all others
2) Pages have NOT lost Google cache or description
3) 95% of backlinks vanished in the last update
4) Not in top 100 serps - but Google seems to know who we are and often groups our sites together in clusters when lower down in the SERPs.
Our possible crimes:
1) Had/still have a human unfriendly links directory with many reciprocals. I'd say most of our pagerank came from cheesy link swaps. Which I hate but see as a necessary evil to get ranked in my niche.
2) Each lost site was a backup for another main site on our topic. Stressing here: There was NO duplicate content, no similar IP, no linking between sites on identical topic, and no identical WHOIS data. A few of the sites were on the same ISP with radically different IPs.
3) We cross-linked our home pages for sites covering same topic but different city. I don't think this is a crime, but I'm throwing it in for discussion. One of the sites in the cross-linked network (the oldest one) did not get the penalty.
This was because they had redirects set up such that when anyone searched for Widget Statename they found a site by that name but got channelled into the main Widget site. This was just a directory of Widget suppliers. Not exactly original but effective until recently. They got caught in the filter and so they should have.
"So what's your point caller?", I hear you say.
My point is that a few of us in this thread have been chewing the fat about stuff on our sites that could possibly have warranted a penalty. The example that I gave is an obvious offence but is it not the case that if we have to search for problems on our sites then they most likely don't exist? Which leads us back to the Google is broken conclusion.
What kills me is do I throw these domains away and start again or do I wait for the next PR update and see if we can come back. Meanwhile my business is in limbo.
1. Register a new domain name.
2. Transfer content from the old domain name to the new one.
3. Discontinue the old domain name.
Of course, you need to get rid of the suspicious links before trying to do the above.
It is only a theory. Any experience with this?
Yes thought about that one. I Might dulicate the site and ban googlebot from one set of sites that are now listed #1 everywhere on yahoo. Then with the new domians start the laborious task of getting links again ( thank god I have staff to do that)
