Massive 40-50 page drop for primary keyphrase, no apparent reason, + map listing weirdness
-
Hi. I manage the site http://physiowinnipeg.com, which has had some interesting yo-yo effects lately, culminating in a 40-50 page drop as of last Friday.
The phrase in question: physiotherapy winnipeg
Background:
-
The site has ranked on the first page for this keyphrase since about May
-
There was the occasional blip where the homepage would disappear from rankings altogether for a day or two, and then return back to its regular listing
- This would coincide with a sudden increase in organic places listings (our site would hit the top of the local map listings, but the homepage would vanish)
- Other pages would still appear for the target phrase, just not the homepage
- About a month ago, the organic places listing settled, and the homepage permanently vanished
- Other pages still ranked high, and we commanded many of the listings on the first 10 pages of Google, first page included
- The homepage would still appear for some other searches
- We had been affected by the Google Places --> Google+ Local transition, so I was of the opinion that we needed to wait it out a bit to see if it, like the other issues related to the transition, would work itself out
-
This time around, it worked itself out again, just today -- but we are now ranked slightly lower on the first page and our Google local listing has disappeared (again)
-
Our other pages are still (currently) absent from the first few pages, for this keyphrase
-
The main differences I noticed here, aside from the much longer timeframe of our drop, was that other pages disappeared as well, and that the homepage was actually found, between page 38 and 50, depending on the day
According to SEO Moz and other tools, the site is doing pretty much everything right. I should note, however, that there is a service we use for educational content called Patientsites that loads in the subdomain http://education.physiowinnipeg.com -- and this site has pulled many warnings in SEO Moz (around 10,000, actually, mostly long URL related), as well as a few errors. I'm not sure if this is a part of the problem, but I am considering having the content of the subdomain blocked via robots.txt and Webmaster Tools.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar, or have any insight? This weirdness has gone on too long.
Thanks!
Bobby
-
-
I found Marie's comments very interesting. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be my problem.
I agree with Marie's advice not to do anything to respond to a perceived penalty. Doesn't look like your site is "penalized" but the swings are extreme.
-
Thanks Marie. I appreciate the response and the advice. That was my initial thought, as well, when it first started happening -- it seems to be getting worse though. Hence my concern. Have you hear of anyone else having a similar issue with the map and site listing never being on at the same time?
-
I've seen a number of sites recently that seem to drop out of the search rankings and then reappear (often at a higher position). I think Google is testing some things.
I did 3 searches on G.ca for your search term. The first time you were at the top of page 2, but there were only 3 organic listings and then map listings on page 1. The second time I didn't see you and the third time you were on page one just under the maps listings.
Google's definitely up to something. Don't go doing anything rash right now. This is unlikely to be because of a penalty.
-
Thanks, JustDucky. I suppose it could be an adjustment of those values, but as above, wouldn't you think the exact phrase would be affected -- and would that explain the map listing and page listing only having one active at a time?
-
Thanks for the suggestion, Elias.
I considered the EMD update, but I doubt it's the cause. That wouldn't explain the flip flopping of the organic map and site results, which I am pretty sure pre-dates that update. Also, we have always (and still do) come in at number 1 for the search term "physio winnipeg" -- if it were the EMD update, I would have expected that search to be affected as well.
-
My EMD site dropped from 12 (on last Saturday's MOZ report) to 41 (last night) to 32 a few minute ago for the EMD keyword. The site has also been affected by Panda (April & again recently) but, as Elia's response suggests, G is probably adjusting the EMD values.
-
Hi Bobby,
Have you looked at this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data
You could be experiencing the affect of the Exact Match Domain algorithm update.
Elias
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hi. Has anyone seen a drop in their PA recently? We have over 40 clients and 80% dropped and it has been like this for the past 2 months. I wanted to check if other websites are also experiencing this drop or is it just us?
I'm specifically asking for drops happened in the last 2 months, because before that we had a normal trend. Some websites would go up in their PA rankings and some would drop. But seeing 80% of our clients drop like this is just weird. Just wanted to see if other market leaders are also having the same issue so I can stop attributing it something X-Filish! Our clients are all .EDUs if anyone was wondering. Also the maximum drop has been 4 points in a month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AP_Search0 -
Google Page Speed
Is it worthwhile going after a good score on Google page speed? Had prices but a LOT of money, and don't know if it's worth it or not. Also to add to the complication it is a new site. Does anyone have any experience if it helps rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Do I eventually 301 a page on our site that "expires," to a page that's related, but never expires, just to utilize the inbound link juice?
Our company gets inbound links from news websites that write stories about upcoming sporting events. The links we get are pointing to our event / ticket inventory pages on our commerce site. Once the event has passed, that event page is basically a dead page that shows no ticket inventory, and has no content. Also, each “event” page on our site has a unique url, since it’s an event that will eventually expire, as the game gets played, or the event has passed. Example of a url that a news site would link to: mysite.com/tickets/soldier-field/t7493325/nfc-divisional-home-game-chicago bears-vs-tbd-tickets.aspx Would there be any negative ramifications if I set up a 301 from the dead event page to another page on our site, one that is still somewhat related to the product in question, a landing page with content related to the team that just played, or venue they play in all season. Example, I would 301 to: mysite.com/venue/soldier-field tickets.aspx (This would be a live page that never expires.) I don’t know if that’s manipulating things a bit too much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ticket_King1 -
Big discrepancies between pages in Google's index and pages in sitemap
Hi, I'm noticing a huge difference in the number of pages in Googles index (using 'site:' search) versus the number of pages indexed by Google in Webmaster tools. (ie 20,600 in 'site:' search vs 5,100 submitted via the dynamic sitemap.) Anyone know possible causes for this and how i can fix? It's an ecommerce site but i can't see any issues with duplicate content - they employ a very good canonical tag strategy. Could it be that Google has decided to ignore the canonical tag? Any help appreciated, Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
Where is the best place for Landing Pages to reside on the Home Page?
On this site http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/ I have my main landing pages listed in the navigation under "Types". The reason why I did this is because I am not sure where to insert those on the home page where it does not look spammy to Google and looks natural for users. Obviously they need to appear somewhere on the home page for Google to be able to continue crawling and indexing them. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Which page to target? Home or /landing-page
I have optimized my home page for the keyword "computer repairs" would I be better of targeting my links at this page or an additional page (which already exists) called /repairs it's possible to rename & 301 this page to /computer-repairs The only advantage I can see from targeting /computer-repairs is that the keywords are in the target URL.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
What to call pages
I reckon I've bagged one of the most interesting SEO projects of the year. My new client is selling vibrators. The site is not even in development yet but they want to make it fun and friendly and take away the stigma and "seediness" of the product. Anyway, the owenr has presented a list of "places" within this site which are places where the products are going to be showcased. These are along the lines of, Royal Rabbits Palace, Clitoral Courtyard, Dungeon Dildos, Magical G-arden etc. (there is a bit shreky/fariy tale thing going on) Clearly, these places add a lot to the look and feel of the site but as URL's and Titles, they are clearly not optimal in an SEO sense. What is for the best...making sure we shift the owner back into SEO best practice or hope that having these weird and wonderful names for the pages is going to add enough to the user experience to make it worthwhile to let through. FYI, did you know you can get vibrators that you can plug an ipod into. Man, I've seen some weird things researching this client!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FDC0 -
Duplicate page content
Hi. I am getting error of having duplicate content on my website and pages its showing there are: www.mysitename.com www.mysitename.com/index.html As my best knowledge it only one page, I know this can be solved with some conical tag used in header, but do not know how. Can anyone please tell me about that code or any other way to get this solved. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinetraffic0