Google Gone Mad or Its Some kind of BlackHat ?
-
I was browsing google.co.in and searched for "Mussoorie Hotels" without quote and came across the attached result! the website sitting on #9 is sitting with a wrong page .. i.e a Hotel Page of other place .. i.e nainital
can someone tell me is there something wrong with google or the guy is using some blackhat technique for his/her website ??
M trying to rank for the keyword "mussoorie hotels" from past 4-5 months
Still no luck even in top 5 pages :()
-
But if someone can tell me the exact reason why nainital page is ranking instead of mussoorie will be greatful as it might help me to get my rank back!
I am not sure what other words can be shared to help you better understand the situation.
The travelmasti website has legitimately earned a first page spot for their website. For an unknown reason, the wrong URL is presently showing. You are correct right now there is not a 301 in place. The current page does not show a canonical tag either. It is possible there was a 301 or canonical and it has been removed. It is more likely there is some other issue causing this confusion.
My expectation is Google will resolve the issue soon replace the currently result once they index the /mussoorie.htm page.
The recommended approach for improving your site's rankings is always to focus on your site. Even if you were to get this result removed from Google's index, the improvement to your site is insignificant.
-
@Ryan Kent - I've already checked it twice but neither the page is 301 nor its is using canonical, All results were fine till friday I guess and travelmasti.com/mussoorie.htm was ranking instead of travelmasti.com/nainital.htm for the term mussoorie hotels,
Also, I'll be great full if you can remove the live link from your post
My website with a different URL was thrown on 3rd page last month which was ranking in Top #3 from past 2 years m still not sure whats going on, m sure that my website is safe and is not affected with panda or penguine!
But if someone can tell me the exact reason why nainital page is ranking instead of mussoorie will be greatful as it might help me to get my rank back!
-
I never went that far to check that but I believe you.
-
This seems like a simple case of the wrong page appearing in search results. The correct page is likely: http://www.travelmasti.com/mussoorie.htm
The site has a DA of 60 and at a glance seems legitimate. If you perform a Google.co.in search for "http://www.travelmasti.com/mussoorie.htm" then the URL http://www.travelmasti.com/nainital.htm appears as the first result.
There are several ways this issue can occur and it seems unlikely the site intentionally caused this to happen. The page could have been 301 redirected. The page could have had a canonical tag which was removed. The site is very poorly coded with hundreds of coding errors (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelmasti.com%2Fnainital.htm&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)
One of the coding errors could be the problem.
This is a case of a legitimate site ranking for a term it should rank for, but the wrong page is being offered.
-
Hi Jack,
All though I do agree with you in general, I think this case is slightly different:
- According to opensiteexplorer.org there are no backlinks to this page containing the word mussoorie.
- The linkprofile of this page looks very unnatural (almost no branded/url anchors and all are very nice search queries). It is thus very likely that they purchased these links (i.e.use black hat SEO).
Greets,
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online -
Hi wildhawk,
All websites on the first page for this query have quite a high PA and DA. They have thousands of backlinks (probably payed for them considering the anchor texts) and are also ´quite relevant´ for the search query.
The basis is this:
You rank based on your on-page optimization (relevance) and off-page optimization (importance). You may have a page that is far more optimized for a specific keyword and thus are also more relevant. That doesn't mean you outperform the 1-10 results on the combined result of relevance + importance.
Long story short: My guess is that you need to work on your linkprofile.
I wish you all the best and keep in mind that you are trying to compete in an extremely competitive market.
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online -
m seeing this page since today morning till last night it was all fine! and this page was not even in top 50 for this keyword!
-
I love how everyone thinks people use blackhat to get ranked above other people. Anyways he probably just has backlinks for your phrase, thus Google have ranked him there.
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
-
Webpages & Images Index Graph Gone Down Badly in Google Search Console Why?
Hello All, What is going on with Sitemap Index Status in Google Search Console :- Webpages Submitted - 35000 index showing 21000 whereas previously approx 34500 were index. Images Submitted - 85000 index showing - 11000 whereas previously approx 80000 were index. Whereas when I search in google site:abcd.com is it showing approx 27000 index for webpages. No message from google for penalty or warning etc.Please help.
Technical SEO | | wright3350 -
Google + box on the right hand side
When you search on a company name in Google often the URL of the specific company is shown as 1st organic search result. Often one will also see a Google+ box on the right side when searching on a company name. This Google+ box includes a brand logo as well. Our company has also a Google+ account for several months. This page is also shown in the regular organic search results. But when I search on my specific company name, I don’t see the Google+ box on the right side of the results. However, when I search on my company name including my location, Google does show our Company information in Google Maps style, and that does include our last Google+ update as well. What do I need to do to show our Google+ information on the right side in the organic results when someone searches on our company name (without location), so our work and updates within Google+ are rewarded. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Technical SEO | | Onlinq0 -
When you send disavow link in google webmaster?
I am just wondering if you disavow a link from google webmaster to a certain website. Does that hurt the other websites ranking at all? Thanks
Technical SEO | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT0 -
Google Analytics and Adwords Linkup
I'm in the middle of a log jam with linking google analytics to google adwords. I have a client whose account lists properties for five distinct websites. Company A www.website1.com/
Technical SEO | | OOMDODigital
www.website2.com/
www.website3.com/ There are individual adwords accounts for each property that I'm trying to link up. Here's the issue I"m having. I can link up Website1.com Analytics to Website1.com Adwords. Then I'll link up Website2.com Analyitics to Website2.com Adwords. This will cause Website1.com to be linked up to Website2.com's Adwords. How do I fix this?0 -
Google Dancing?
Hello, I was wondering why my website for some keywords goes from 2nd 3rd page in Google to 7th or even more sometimes? This happens since a while. Any suggestion? Thanks. Eugenio
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
How to rank in Google Places
Normally, I don't have a problem with local SEO (more of a multi-channel sort of online marketing guy) but this one has got me scratching my head. Look at https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wedding+venues+in+essex Theres two websites there (fennes and quendon park) that both have a much more powerful DA but don't appear in the Google Places (Google + Business or whatever it's labeled as). Why are websites such as Boreham house ranking top in the map listings? Quendon Park has a Google places listing, it's full of content, the NAP all matches up. Its a stronger website. Boreham House isn't any closer to the centroid than Quendon Park Just got me struggling this one
Technical SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Look of google results
Can anyone tell me why some google results show the main page and then a listing of all subsequent pages (i.e. results for SEOMOZ) while others just show the main page with nothing under it. I have two different sites (one personal the other biz) and they both show their search results differently. Is it something in the site creation or how it is crawled by google? Thanks. bKs3C
Technical SEO | | STF0 -
My site has vanished from google
Hi my site has vanished from google. We have been for a very long time. for example if you put in gastric band hypnotherapy then we would be first page number two and also lots of other keywords but now we have vanished from google and i do not know why or how to solve this. can anyone please help me and help me understand what i need to do to solve this please My site is http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk I am not sure if i have been banned or why i have dropped out of google
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860