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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.

  • arkana


    Just curious what the pro's on here think is the reason why our site got hammered recently. The URL is www.jobshadow.com.  We've got gobs of quality content that had been ranking for quite a few keywords.  Even one from Rand himself http://www.jobshadow.com/interview-with-seo-and-seomoz-founder-rand-fishkin/ Rankings for even the exact match domain keyword 'Job Shadow' have been pummeled.  Anyway, we've got a pretty solid link profile I would think. We also have a very high user time on the site, thus suggesting the organic traffic was engaged when Google ranked us for those keywords. We have lots of unsolicited inbound links and even recent ones from PBS.   I'm not really sure what it takes to please the "machine" at this point.  Curious as to what everyone here thinks.

    | arkana
    0
  • OrionGroup


    I was wondering if anyone has noticed changes in how Google returns 'site:' searches over the past few years or months. I remember being able to do a search such as "site:example.com" and Google would return a list of webpages where the order may have shown the higher page rank pages (due to link building, etc) first and/or parent category pages higher up in the list of the first page (if relevant) first (as they could have higher PR naturally, anyways). It seems that these days I can hardly find quality / target pages that have higher page rank on the first page of Google's site: search results. Is this just me... or has Google perhaps purposely scrambled the SERPS somewhat for site: searches to not give away their page ranking secrets?

    | OrionGroup
    1
  • rhgraves65


    We are an inbound marketing agency, most of our clients are not relying on local seo.  I have a pretty good understanding of it when starting fresh but not so much in joining a "movie in progress" kind of scenario.  Recently we've brought on two clients who have had their websites in place for awhile, have made small attempts at marketing themselves online over the years and its resulted in multiple Google places listings, variations of the company names (one of them changed their name), worried there are yet more accounts out there they aren't aware of, etc (analytics, and others from well intentioned employees and past service providers - no internal leadership at the company level).  In reading Google help forums I'm seeing some recently having their accounts suspended when they try to clean things up - in one case a person setup a new Google account thinking he would start fresh and in trying to claim listings, get rid of duplicates, etc. his account was suspended.  What is the CURRENT recommended course of action in situations like these? With all the changes going on with Google, I don't know which route to take and have combed the Internet reading articles about this (including Google's resources) - would like some current real world advise.

    | rhgraves65
    1
  • neooptic


    Hi! Since the new Penguin rollout, we've seen rankings drop for http://www.leanonturkey.co.uk/ for the terms 'turkey recipes' (UK) and 'low fat recipes' (UK) from #4 and #15 respectively. This may be down to very strong competition, but I'm also concerned over the on-page content, which may not be detailed enough. Any tips would be much appreciated!

    | neooptic
    0
  • WebRiverGroup


    Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?

    | WebRiverGroup
    0
  • lucidsoftech


    Hi Everyone, Any idea about what the next step after hitting by Penguin 2.0 We go for more link building or content optimization or some thing else..?

    | lucidsoftech
    0
  • GoAbroadKP


    We haven't been manually penalized by Google yet but we have had our fair share of things needing to be fixed; malware, bad links, lack/if no content, lack-luster UX, and issues with sitemaps & redirects. Should we still submit a reconsideration even though we haven't had a direct penalty? Does hurt us to send it?

    | GoAbroadKP
    0
  • Webrevolve


    Hey guys, I've just been doing a bit of searching to give the new Penguin update a good going over and came across the following result on the right side of the page. As you can see, it's a link to the site that's sitting at the top of the SERP. At first, however, I thought it was some snazzy AdWords feature. Although, having clicked into the link "20 hours ago", it seems that Google has pulled the snippet from the diy-kitchens.com's Google+ feed. Anyone seen this before? Is it a new thing? Is it only the top result that's able to get a snippet from Google+? 7hA4g49.png

    | Webrevolve
    0
  • instinctive


    We have seen rankings drop considerably for www.think-ins.co.uk in the last 48 hours, I know Penguin 2.0 has been released but anyone got any ideas on what specifically we might have been penalised for? Thanks

    | instinctive
    0
  • AymanH


    Hello ! I'm facing a stupid issue but cannot solve it. Google Analytics can track the seach into a website. When I try to activate it I need to add some more parameters that I do not know. http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f1bnau8d Has anyone ever tried to configure Google analytics search for a Joomla website ? Tks a lot !

    | AymanH
    0
  • lucidsoftech


    Hello Everyone, I am amazed to see that all the ranking of keywords got down after Penguin webspam algorithm updated on May 22, 2013. Is there any suggestion how we will recover and get the ranking back. Thanks

    | lucidsoftech
    0
  • Johnny4B


    Without trying to rub salt into the wounds of anyone hit hard, on the flip-side did anyone get some good news. We have one particular client that was effected in an immense positive way today, for the last four months we found it difficult to outrank one of their competitors ... but they have vanished of the face of the earth today, well Google's earth .. which meant our client moved up the SERP for a number of their key-phrases, which gave me a sense of immense delight. I could see exactly what they where doing, not so natural link building, creating a lot of sub-directories, naming each index file by the key phrase and linking all their internal links, while disturbing all their backlinks form the same source to each index page ... I wondered of they stayed under the radar cause each term was a sub-directory almost. No doubt they will be back, but not after a clean up and a restructure to their website Anyway I digress, anyone else seen any major improvements

    | Johnny4B
    3
  • McTaggart


    RE: "In order to maximize the direct traffic to a domain, it is advised that webmasters should only buy a domain if the .com version is available. " http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain I am working for a client who's had a domain live for 5 years or so without a .com version of the domain (just .co.uk) - the domain is also hyphenated (which doesn't look like a great idea). So, just wondering what research has been done into probs caused by lack of .com domain and by using hyphenated domain. I'm trying to figure out whether it would be worth advising client to switch to a new domain. Your thoughts would be welcome 🙂

    | McTaggart
    2
  • Njave_MCP


    Hello! I have a website that has been hit with around 120-150 spammy bookmarking sites which I believe are just scraping content from one another or were added by someone that was hired earlier or maybe some other action, but that really doesn't matter. My question is whether I should be worried about that many domains linking to the site in question with anchor text that is "www.domainname.com" and linking to the domain itself? I have done quite a few researches on this issue and the general conclusion is these don't help, but they don't hurt your rankings either. I wanted to hear from the SEOMoz community about it though. My opinion is Google doesn't take them seriously and we shouldn't worry about them, try to take them off and we should simply work on our content, guest posts, produce our generally great deals on our services and move on. Thanks!

    | Njave_MCP
    0
  • inhouseseo


    Over the past few days I have noticed some apparent major changes. Before I explain, let me say this: Checking my analytics and WMT: There is an increase in traffic (even via google organic) There is no drop in impressions or clicks There is no drop in indexed pages in GWT Having said that; When I check my indexed pages using site:www.mywebsite.com, I see only 30 results as opposed to the 120K that I was seeing before (it was steadily climbing). The indexed pages have increase 3 fold in the past year, because of the increase in pages, updates, and products on the site. I see a sudden drop in rankings for major keywords that had been steadily rising. For example, I had some major keywords that were on page 7-8, not they are on page 20+ or not at all. Also, the page that used to show in the rankings has changed. I have only done white-hat guest blogging in the past year for link building, on a small scale (maybe 20-30 links in a year). They only other change recently, is that we are: Posting products on Houzz and Pinterest daily adding our site to all local directories (white pages, Yelp, citysearch, etc.) My site got hit by Penguin more than a year ago, but we have done everything right since, and our traffic via organic results has more than doubled since the Penguin release. What the hell is going on? Should I be concerned?

    | inhouseseo
    0
  • FVdBeuken


    My site BalanceME.com has been performing really well and continually climbs more and more but in the last 7 days we have had a drop this last week.  We went from #2 for weight loss camp to #6, and  even further on other terms. It is mid May and I cannot find any other explanation for the sudden drop.  I am hoping someone could give me some sort if idea what could possibly be the answer.  Recently we have had two press releases go out, target for keywords, and also installed images that navigate to new pages on the site.  There have been few additions to the site, and nothing can explain the drop. Other companies in our group have not had issues with recent drops, and we use the same practices with the other organizations. Thank you for your time

    | FVdBeuken
    0
  • GM007


    Google is showing crazy results in these days sometimes my sites are on top of all keywords sometimes far behind in search engine in same day what is going on ????

    | GM007
    0
  • JCurrier


    I have a site that I don't really use any longer but still has some okay rankings. I'd like to take advantage of the links point to that site. Is it better to redirect that site to my new one or to just place a link on the homepage pointing to my new site?

    | JCurrier
    0
  • tdawson09


    I'm waiting, probing and analyzing and haven't seen any signs of a Penguin change. I am seeing some of my head terms bounce around the last couple of days. Mostly bouncing up and then back down again. I'm not sure if these are signs of an algo change starting, and working through Google's servers. Has anyone seen anything yet?

    | tdawson09
    0
  • hfranz


    I am curious to know if an ecommerce website plays a role in higher rankings. we have been struggling for some time on a term and all of our competitors have an online shopping cart. we have a custom magento website with a request a quote form as our products are very costly. (range from $500 - $250,000). Is there something we can add to the code to help boost our rankings?

    | hfranz
    0
  • Llanero


    I read somewhere (hard to say where with all the information about SEO and google!) that in the future, Google will put less importance on the URL name for ranking purposes. Any thoughts?

    | Llanero
    0
  • MarshallThompson31


    Hello everyone at SEOMOZ      😄 I have a question if you would be as kind as to inform me of which direction that I should take on this matter would be the more desirable approach for my seo strategy I have been using my location in my URL structure since I started doing SEO 5 years ago and I have always benefited from including my city in the URL. My question is, since the SEO landscape has change so drastically over the past 2 years and the Search Engines have become much more end user friendly and list suggestions for users as they type would it be more beneficial in 2013 to have the "Keyword" before or after the Geo Targeted Location in the URL structure? I own a computer repair business for the past 6 years now and I know that when i check to see where I am ranking for a particular keyword phrase such as "Computer Repair" GOOGLE detects my location and provides suggestions as I start typing out "Computer Repair" for the search query. One of the suggestions is "Computer Repair Wilmington NC" so I am starting to wonder if placing the Geo Targeted City after the Keyword  would be the wiser choice instead of before it like a couple of years ago? Working Example: Here is a site that I am building out right now to re-brand my business. Currently I have one of the Silo Category Slugs set as seen below using the Location before the Keyword The First Example has the Geo Target Location before the Keyword and looks more natural to visitors on the site (at least to me) however I'm afraid that I may be shooting myself in the foot not placing the keyword before the Target Location? But if I do that, It does not read or flow fluently to the average looker so kinda confused and torn on how to deal with this>! FIRST EXAMPLE: Location Before Keyword Silo Parent Category  = "Computer Repair" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/wilmington-nc-computer-repair/ Silo Child Category  =  "Laptop" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/wilmington-nc-computer-repair/laptop-repair/ Silo Grand Child Category  =  "LCD Replacement" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/wilmington-nc-computer-repair/laptop/lcd-screen-replacement/ **SECOND EXAMPLE: ** Keyword Before Location Silo Parent Category  = "Computer Repair" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair-wilmington-nc/ Silo Child Category  =  "Laptop" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair-wilmington-nc/laptop-repair/ Silo Grand Child Category  =  "LCD Replacement" http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair-wilmington-nc/laptop-repair/lcd-screen-replacement/ Which would be the more favorable of the 2 examples that I have given please? Keyword before or After the Geo Targeted Location? thank you

    | MarshallThompson31
    0
  • jhinchcliffe


    Hey everyone, I typed "Vancouver Colleges" into Google and this new feature came up which I have never seen. It displays popular schools. Could someone tell me what this is called? And how do I get our college on here? Thank you! 4hnT7bV.png

    | jhinchcliffe
    0
  • Bondara


    What's going on at the moment, i can't find any info on the 5/9th May but Mozcast is showing some movement. Anyone have any info? Cheers

    | Bondara
    0
  • pasware


    Given how Google uses Page Rank to pass link juice from one page to the next if Google can only find a page in an XML site map it will have no link juice and appear very low in search results if at all. The priority in XML sitemaps field also seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Google determines the priority of a page based on the number of inbound links to it. If your site is designed properly the most important pages will have the most links. The changefreq field could maybe be useful if you have existing pages that are updated regularly. Though it seems to me Google tends to crawl sites often enough that it isn't useful. Plus for most of the web the significant content of an existing page doesn't change regularly, instead new pages are added with new content. This leaves the lastmod field as being potentially useful. If Google starts each crawl of your site by grabbing the sitemap and then crawls the pages whose lastmod date is newer than its last crawl of the site their crawling could be much more efficient. The site map would not need to contain every single page of the site, just the ones that have changed recently. From what I've seen most site map generation tools don't do a great job with the fields other than loc. If Google can't trust the priority, changefreq, or lastmod fields they won't put any weight on them. It seems to me the best way to rank well in Google is by making a good, content-rich site that is easily navigable by real people (and that's just the way Google wants it). So, what's the point of XML site maps? Does the benefit (if any) outweigh the cost of developing and maintaining them?

    | pasware
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    Analyzing our traffic, looks like we were hit site wide, with some article pages that don't have great engagement seeing more damage than others. We've been talking to other sites, and sites that have never seen any penalties and do everything right have also seen about 15-20% drop in traffic. The sites we know that weren't affected are brands (sites you would recognize by name). The only conclusion I can draw from everything (looking at mozcast metrics 'big 10' is that branded websites saw a boost. Does anyone else have any theories about what this most recent update was about?

    | nicole.healthline
    0
  • RobertChapman


    Greetings Mozzers. I would really appreciate some input / advice / a sanity check on our existing SEO strategy. A year into implementing the strategy (outlined below) there appears to be no uplift in our existing traffic volume. I guess i'm wondering. Am I on the right track? Is there something I'm perhaps additional should be doing / i'm doing something wrong? Am I suffering from Penguin? The strategy: We produce a range of content, this is written 100% for our audience, How-to guides, infographics, industry news etc. - this has lead to getting a wide range of publications with high powered relevant domains, widely shared and read. As a result we now have a series of ongoing columns where we regularly produce articles that our widely read and shared. We have a wide variety of homepage and deep links from quality sources. We have our own blog producing a wide range of content relevant to our audience. Industry trends, news, changes that affect our readers, guides. We optimise our pages using the Moz Page Grader for select keywords. We've structured our site architecture appropriately for the most important pages. Additional info: We received a WMT penalty last year in march - unnatural links. We engaged an SEO agency who simply went rogue, automated link building with spun articles. We fired the agency, asked them to remove the links they had "created" and set about a resubmission. Between March and May when we made our resubmission traffic dropped 40%. Now we did have he resubmission accepted after several reconsiderations but  whilst we've seen a slight recovery we have plateaued for almost a year. This penalty obviously straddles the time penguin arrived, so I wonder if perhaps we haven't seen a recovery as we are still affected by penguin. Despite all the great work we have done. If anyone has any advice or insight, please do get in touch.

    | RobertChapman
    0
  • Webrevolve


    Hey there, One of the clients we're working with has lost about 1,000 or so backlinks over the last two or three months - mainly old article and directory links - and it has massively affected the site's search rankings. The site was ranking for pretty much all of its keywords in prominent positions on Google (mostly first page) but has now seen positions dive to 50, 90 and even outside of the top 100. Is there any immediate action we can put into place to help restore our rankings?

    | Webrevolve
    0
  • Webworld_Norway


    Hello! Actually, I would like to know the major check points which decides the organic search result[Google]. I see many of the sites in first page which are not even having good level of page and domain authority. I am a beginner but i have done all the score card checkpoints and issue free pages 🙂 Some where i dropped on organic search result. Ex Keyword : blikkenslager Targeted page : http://www.nortekk.no/vi-utforer/blikkenslager-15/ Search Engine : Google.no [norsk (nynorsk)] Thank you for your help!

    | Webworld_Norway
    0
  • iskq


    Specifically, we detected low-quality pages on your site which do not provide substantially unique content or added value. Examples could include thin affiliate pages, doorway pages, automatically generated content, or copied content. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. Google Webmaster Tool send me this message I think the low-quality pages is like the this http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/bursa-fethiye-ucevler-nakliye-5834 page and we have so many pages like this... Example 1: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/evden-eve-nakliyat-5906 **Example 2 : **http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/cekmekoy-izmit-5905 **Example 3: **http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/evden-eve-nakliyat-5906 What should I do to these pages HELP 😞

    | iskq
    0
  • BallyhooLtd


    Hi, I am currently working on a site that relies solely on it's images to attract traffic. My concern is that search engines will index our images, make them available through image searches and therefore allow our potential visitors to bypass our website completely. I know that there are a number of methods available such as disallowing images in robots.txt or using "noimageindex" tags in the HTML etc. but do search engines always pay attention to these requests? Does anyone have any experience with no indexing images? Or are there any methods that are guaranteed to work? Thanks in Advance.

    | BallyhooLtd
    0
  • sparkit


    Hi there, I have been analysing the performance of my keywords through SEOMoz reports for some time now and I am trying to understand why I rank highly in certain keywords but do not receive any organic search visits for them? My pages are tagged with the keyword(s) and my content including new content through my blog pushes the words. These keywords are industry standards that I know people search for and are used by other companies and competitors and yet, my site does not receive many, if any, visits despite being ranked in the top 5 or 10. Any help or advice would be much appreciated!

    | sparkit
    0
  • jimmyzig


    In most browsers, our visitors search for our domain and when they start typing the URL the drop down auto choices list .org as the first choice for our website. We do own the .org but it points to the .com and the .com is our primary domain. Why does .org seem to dominate Google search in this case? And since we have the .org forwarded to the .com, do we need to be concerned?

    | jimmyzig
    0
  • thealika


    Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is:  migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain  migration-lawyers.com  is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png

    | thealika
    0
  • Futura


    Hi All SEOmoz members and team, As I was reading this, is it true that Google does this . Simply, I don't think so, I haven't experienced any of such what is being talked [http://www.fairsearch.org/search-manipulation/what-google-isnt-saying-in-how-search-works/ C](http://www.fairsearch.org/search-manipulation/what-google-isnt-saying-in-how-search-works/ "http://www.fairsearch.org/search-manipulation/what-google-isnt-saying-in-how-search-works/")ome on, let us discuss the real thing about Google. Teginder Ravi

    | Futura
    0
  • afycon


    Hi All, I have a website mexat.com and continuously my Alexa rank decreasing before a month my website Alexa rank was approx 3500 but now it is 4,487 so I am worried about that and want to get Alexa below 2000. So please suggest me what I can do to get good Alexa rank. I am waiting for your valuable feedback. Thanks Mike

    | afycon
    0
  • raghavkapur


    I have seen a 20% drop in traffic from google last week (After April 29th). However when I try to analyze the rank of the keywords in the google results that send me traffic they seem to be the same. Today (6th March) Traffic has fallen further again with not much/any visible change in the rankings. Any ideas on what the reason for this could be? I have not made any changes to the website recently.

    | raghavkapur
    0
  • casper434


    My author photo has been showing up in search for quite some time but starting today I noticed that it no longer does even though the structured data testing tool still has it showing up. It only seems to show up on my google+ profile. Anyone notice the same thing?

    | casper434
    0
  • Wayne76


    Hey gang, My client's keywords have recently taken a header... We've owned the top 3 spots in the SERPs for several keyword phrases for several years. In the past 3 months we've watched all those keywords and local results fade... Examples of the types of terms we were consistently ranking for included things like: Indianapolis injury lawyer Indiana accident attorneys personal injury lawyers in Indianapolis semi-truck injury attorneys and several other similar keyword phrases. Was hoping someone would be kind enough to give me a second opinion about what the cause(s) may be. The site: http://www.2keller.com/ Love and peace to all of you! 🙂 Wayne

    | Wayne76
    0
  • JessieT


    We are going to be redesigning our website and switching to a new domain. I think we will set up a permanent 301 redirect from each page of the old domain to a page on the new domain. We would like to leave the old domain homepage up with all content removed and have a link pointing to the new domain. Is there any SEO harm to leaving the old domain homepage up? Thank you! Jessie

    | JessieT
    0
  • CleanEdisonInc


    Hello SEO Community, I'm trying to find the right balance between adapting to Googles move towards local listings and not spreading out my site too thin. We provide our services nationally and currently have local city listings (i.e. http://www.cleanedison.com/courses/city/IL-Chicago) but these do not show up in the SERPs for individual products + city (i.e. Building Analyst Chicago) So I could make individual pages for each product in each city, but that would exponentially increase the number of URLs on the site and probably inundate me with duplicate content. Is there a better way I could take advantage of local listings without creating all the duplicate content and other problems that would arise with individual URLs? Thanks

    | CleanEdisonInc
    0
  • BabelPR


    I have a client who came to us after recieving a manual unnatural link warning, and probable Penguin penalty. After a lot of hard work, we had the manual penalty revoked, and have done everything we can to get the Penguin penalty lifted. This all happened after the last Penguin data refresh (early Jan), so we're still waiting to see a recovery; but in the meantime, we're seeing some very weird impression data in GWT....... The website targets UK users, and has very little US traffic, except every thursday, GWT reports a massive spike in search impressions from the US. Could this be Google testing the new Penguin data? See our US impressions for since Feb here - http://imgur.com/2Bl9a3f 2Bl9a3f.png

    | BabelPR
    0
  • DarinPirkey


    I've come across this recently and wanted to get your thoughts. I personally live in a city called Greenacres (yes, it's the place to be) but my zip code is also for Lake Worth.  I'm a local SEO company so doing Local SEO stuff is pretty pointless (Google changed that in 2010) but I am sure other people have this issue for their business. Question, What do you do when your zip code is for two different cities.  Do you try to make all NAPs (Name Address Phone Numbers) the same city.  What if you cant'? Does having the NAP show up different cities hurt your efforts? etc.  Obviously I think you'd try to keep the NAP as consistent as possible but what do you do if the citation source changes it or only uses the major of the two cities? There isn't a right or wrong answer (or maybe there is) but I wanted to get some thoughts on it. Darin.

    | DarinPirkey
    0
  • kchandler


    There were a lot of questions and data on this a few years back and nothing terribly recent so i wanted to get the discussion going again and see if any new data has been published. Is hosting your website on a shared host like Godaddy or Network Solutions going to hurt your rankings because their holds a chance that you could be on the same IP as spammy websites? My gut feeling is no primarily because almost 90% of the worldwide web is on shared hosting but i do not have a lot of data to back it up. Id love to hear some feedback. Cheers - Kyle

    | kchandler
    0
  • Ron10


    If someone links to my plumbing site with this link as the anchor text: http://www.plumbers.com/austin-plumbers.html does the key phrase "austin plumbers" get counted in the anchor text by google or is this a sample of anchor text that google ignores? Thanks mozzers! Ron

    | Ron10
    0
  • PeterRota


    My question is, how does google personalize the search results for non logged in users and incoqnito searches? I already know about the location personalization  whether you're logged in or not and auto complete. But, is personalization still helping in the other cases. Does for example Google keep track of your I.P and then match suggestions that way? Additionally, any other resources would be great.

    | PeterRota
    0
  • AMG100


    Hi I use to have a handy tool in Firefox (Google Toolbar) that was very handy for checking page ranks and what date a page had been cached. For a while with the newer versions of Firefox I cannot seem to locate this useful tool, Can anybody recommend any useful tools for checking the above. Thanks Adam

    | AMG100
    0
  • mark_baird


    I'm interested to find out if anyone has and idea of when it will be or good guesses I would be interested to hear your thoughts. I have put a big effort into an SEO upgrade on my site and I'm interested in what impact I can expect when the next big update comes. Assuming I have fixed the issues that had been causing my traffic drop.

    | mark_baird
    0
  • MABES


    I was wondering if you have heard about any Google Local algorithm changes.  We have about 200 franchise locations.  Some of our locations have dropped significantly over the past few weeks.  Locations that were showing up in the 1-3 positions are now no longer showing on the first page.  This is for very relevant phrases for our main line of business (which is also in our business name)... ‘Phrase, CITY NAME’.  These locations have plenty of positive Google reviews. We would typically rank well for a phrase like that based on our relevance. I did some brainstorming.  Do you think any of these could have any impact? Google is all about things looking and feeling natural including link building, etc.  We have used Yext which made a lot of changes across the web to fix addresses, etc.  Do you think Google may be seeing this as unnatural?  Too many changes at to many sites in to short a period of time? Along those same lines, do you think Google may be penalizing some of our franchise pages for being to ‘perfect’?  It would be ‘natural’ for addresses to have some difference across the web and a bit unnatural to have them all match so perfectly. I know that Google has always stated the business name should be listed in Google Local the way it is listed to the general public.  Things such as “Business Name Boston” should be listed as “Business Name”.  Each of our franchise locations is named in house to reflect their geo location..... "Business Name Boston", "Business Name St. Louis".  Many of our competitors also use the practice of attaching geo terms as well.  Do you think we may be getting hit with a penalty now even though we have listed things on Google with the Geo term for years.... and is how WE refer to each location?  Is it possible that by working with Yext, we drew attention to this practice?  Should we remove our local listings geo term on Google Local?  How about across the web? We are in a business that does not require customers to come to our location.  Some of our locations have not suppressed the address in their local listings while others have.  Many of our competitors have not.  Do you think this could play into it? Some of our locations that are not showing in Local have good organic results.  Have you heard anything about Google dropping Local if they show in organic? I know Google has been looking at social media more and more and I believe they will continue to do so.  If our local pages have no social presence, could this adversely affect things?  (I think this is probably not the case…. but wanted to throw it out there) I have noticed that in some cases where Local has dropped, we have multiple offices in that metro area.  Is it possible that this could affect things? Have you heard of any Local algorithm changes?  I know they are releasing a new dashboard sporadically, could this be in conjunction with a larger Local algorithm change? Our CMS tool does not allow us to change Title/Meta per page (I know... terrible!!).  So every page has the same title and same meta description. (We are changing our CMS system!  Can't wait!).  Could this play into it? Thanks for any feedback!

    | MABES
    1
  • McTaggart


    Just wondering how best to see this - which tool to use. I'm dealing with a website with several thousand inbound links from around 100 root domains. Thanks in advance, Luke

    | McTaggart
    0

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