Why are my URL's changing
-
My rankings suddenly dropped and when trying to understand why I realized that nearly all images in Google's cached version of my site were missing. In the actual site they appear but in the cached version they don't.
I noticed that most of the images had a ?6b5830 at the end of the URL and these were the images that were not showing.
I am hoping that I found the reason for the drop in rankings. Maybe since Google cannot see a lot of the content it decided not to rank it as well (particularly since it seems to happen on thousands of pages).
This is a cached version of my site
I am using the following plugins that might be causing it: Yoasts SEO plugin, W3 total cache.
- Does anyone know what is causing ?6b5830 to be added to the end of most of my URL's?
- Could this be the reason for the ranking drop?
Thanks in advance!
-
W3 Total Cache is what's adding these URL parameters, Jill. It's done so that you can expire the long-term cached version of those images quickly and automatically should the image need to be updated. (This can be controlled in W3TC's settings)
And no, in my opinion there's no way this could be the cause of a rankings drop.
There have been some major fluctuations in search rankings around 7,8,9 May. Is that about the time frame you saw the sudden drop? Many are speculating that Google applied another Panda algorithm update very recently.
Paul
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
-
Dealing with broken internal links/404s. What's best practice?
I've just started working on a website that has generated lots (100s) of broken internal links. Essentially specific pages have been removed over time and nobody has been keeping an eye on what internal links might have been affected. Most of these are internal links that are embedded in content which hasn't been updated following the page's deletion. What's my best way to approach fixing these broken links? My plan is currently to redirect where appropriate (from a specific service page that doesn't exist to the overall service category maybe?) but there are lots of pages that don't have a similar or equivalent page. I presume I'll need to go through the content removing the links or replacing them where possible. My example is a specific staff member who no longer works there and is linked to from a category page, should i be redirecting from the old staff member and updating the anchor text, or just straight up replacing the whole thing to link to the right person? In most cases, these pages don't rank and I can't think of many that have any external websites linking to them. I'm over thinking all of this? Please help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
Adding a parameter to the URL / URL Stracture
Dear Community, I would like to ask a question regarding url structure. We are struggling with shorting urls and we thought to add a "parameter" to the url. Example: domain.com/product**/a/** or domain.com**/a/**product/ Current url structure: domain.com/product/ So we go after and short url contains "/a/" and find the category we want. Is this going to harm our SEO strategies? Any idea is welcome.
Technical SEO | | geofil0 -
Redirecting .edu subdomains to our site or taking the link, what's more valuable?
We have a relationship built through a service we offer to universities to be issued a .edu subdomain that we could redirect to our landing page relevant to that school. The other option is having a link from their website to that same page. My first question is, what would be more valuable? Can you pass domain authority by redirecting a subdomain to a subdirectory in my root domain? Or would simply passing the link equity from a page in their root domain to our page pass enough value? My second question is, if creating a subdomain with a redirect is much more valuable, what is the best process for this? Would we simply have their webmaster create the subdomain for us an have them put a 301 redirect to our page? Is this getting in the greyer hat area? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | Dom4410 -
Is it worth changing our blog post URL's?
We're considering changing the URL's for our blog posts and dropping the date information. Ex. http://spreecommerce.com/blog/2012/07/27/spree-1-1-3-released/ changes to http://spreecommerce.com/blog/spree-1-1-3-released/ Based on what I've learned here the new URL is better for SEO but since these pages already exist do we risk a minor loss of Google juice with 301 redirects? We have a sitemap for the blog posts so I imagine this wouldn't be too hard for Google to learn the new ones.
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Would duplicate listings effect a client's ranking if they used same address?
Lots of duplication on directory listings using similar or same address, just different company names... like so-and-so carpet cleaning; and another listing with so-and-so janitorial services. Now my client went from a rank around 3 - 4 to not even in the top 50 within a week. -- -- -- Would duplication cause this sudden drop? Not a lot of competition for a client using keyword (janitorial services nh); -- -- -- would a competitor that recently optimized a site cause this sudden drop? Client does need to optimize for this keyword, and they do need to clean up this duplication. (Unfortunately this drop happened first of March -- I provided the audit, recommendations/implementation and still awaiting the thumbs up to continue with implementation). --- --- --- Did Google make a change and possibly find these discrepancies within listings and suddenly drop this client's ranking? And they there's Google Places:
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar
Client usually ranks #1 for Google Places with up to 12 excellent reviews, so they are still getting a good spot on the first page. The very odd thing though is that Google is still saying that need to re-verify their Google places. I really would like to know for my how this knowledge how a Google Places account could still need verification and yet still rank so well within Google places on page results? because of great reviews? --- Any ideas here, too? _Cindy0 -
Changing .html to .asp in URLs
Hi Mozzers, I have a question. The webmaster of a client of mine needs to make changes to some files which will effect the URL's. Essentially everything is staying the same but the end of the URL will change from .html to .asp. This is because the site will be dynamically loading content (perhaps from a database) (i.e. latest news to come from their blog etc..) In order to do this we would need to change the filenames of the whole website. (i.e. personnel.html would become personel.asp). Changing URLs can harm indexation but a small change to the end - would Google drop these pages? A 301 redirect is not possible from old URL to new. What impact would this have on Rankings? Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0 -
Are 301s advisable for low-traffic URL's?
We are using some branded terms in URLs that we have been recently told we need to stop using. If the pages in question get little traffic, so we're not concerned about losing traffic from broken URLs, should we still do 301 redirects for those pages after they are renamed? In other words, are there other serious considerations besides any loss in traffic from direct clicks on those broken URLs that need to be considered? This comes up because we don't have anyone in-house that can do the redirects, so we need to pay our outside web development company. Is it worth it?
Technical SEO | | PGRob0