Massive 40-50 page drop for primary keyphrase, no apparent reason, + map listing weirdness

[PinnacleWpg]

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

[JustDucky]

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.

[PinnacleWpg]

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?

[MarieHaynes]

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.

[PinnacleWpg]

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?

[PinnacleWpg]

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.

[JustDucky]

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.

[A_Q]

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