New content cause for drop? Still showing old cache though...
-
About 10 days ago I added about 750 words of new text to a homepage as it was simply a sign up landing page and rather sparse. I presumed that by adding content it would help google understand the content of the site as it is a single page on the root domain (as soon as users sign up they go to a subdomain). Yesterday though the site recieved a huge drop in traffic and now recieves almost no organic traffic at all from google. I've done the obvious like checked WMT for messages but I'm not sure as to what caused the drop. As far as I'm aware there were no confirmed google updates on 7/6/13.
The strange thing is that when I check the google cache its about 3 weeks old so I'm guessing google is using the old cache to reference my site content against search queries. Does that mean the changes I made are not the cause for the drop in rankings? The title tag however has changed when the site is showin in the SERPS. How can that be if google has an old cache?
-
Samuel, I'd like to start over fresh in answering your question because there are too many thoughts going on here at once. Let's start with the obvious: Can you provide a link so we can have a look at the content you wrote? It is possible that you have crossed some sort of content overoptimization threshold if it seems to be keyword-stuffed.
Regarding timing, Google has a lot of databases and they don't all update simultaneously. It isn't uncommon for the title tag to update in the SERPs before the page content updates in the cached snapshot. Furthermore, algorithmic calculations, including whether or not to apply a filter or penalty, do not always happen at the same speed that indexation happens.
All of this is to say that just because a drop in traffic happened after you updated content doesn't mean the content was the cause of that drop. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) is a logical fallacy. But there does seem to be a strong temporal correlation so it is the obvious place to start ---> Can you share a link to the content?
-
Hi Sam, Here is info about this from Matt Cutts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk&feature=youtu.be
I hope this helps,
use Google Web master tools fech as a google bot then add to index all links
Hope this help,
Tom
-
I only added the subdomain yesterday with a wordpress blog. The main site is html only. The rankings drop were before I added the blog on the subdomain.How I instruct google to recoginise the subdomain as part of the main domain. Is that what you're saying?
Thanks.
-
Please accept my apology I'm doing this on a cell phone and trying to Doug in a couple other things.
It is definitely because you are using a subdomain is your master site like www.
and if you were to change that then you'll will lose Rank Unless you instruct Google to recognize the root domain as part of the same URL as the sub domain the site is subject to being treated as a new URL with out the subdomain for what ever you use as subdomain this case www. Or not maybe? Regardless what you done is tell Google that this URL is not on the fully qualified domain name which could include www. .is no longer your homepage so it gave it what it we give any brand-new website homepage you need to add the subdomain then it should work.
If you use OSE on a subdomain like test. Example.com it is going to be less powerful check using Moz rank, trustUntil google is made to understand that this is part of the fully qualified domain and simply there to be part of the FQDN and put to index and treat it like its part of the Subdomain that was ranking well already it will not rank just like
I would not want to use some of my subdomain that I use for other purposes like video.Example.com domain it gets low rank It's not relative content wise to my primary domain.
There are exceptions with content delivery networks ranking very well
So
Please do not confuse what I said about CDN being bad for ranking at all. CDN's help rank and having a subdomain that is a CDN.Example.com will. Help rank your site very highly depending on the CDN and the cookie configuration it gets much more technical regardless I am not saying anything negative about CDN's and ranking it is simply a popular way of creating a subdomain and will most likely boost your ranking I was just using it as an example as it is a very popular way of adding a subdomain
all the best,
tom
-
Sorry your home page is a sign up only page?
And the news homepage coming up the root domain then you made a change to the structure of it which I'm sure was indexed by Google. Or should be if it's not. It sounds to me as if you should tell Google Webmaster tools that your homepage is a gateway and you do not consider it your actual homepage or to the traditional thing it allows sign-ups along with creating content
-
3 week old cache could be nothing or could be slow server and bad site design java, too many links on pages , PageRank you can do wonders with a site audit and a fast host what type of website EG WordPress , just HTML who do you host with?
-
In google Use site: then whatever your new page is not just your home page to see if its been indexed. If not fetch it in GWT.
Your server sends the changes to your site changes they will show up when the DNS + server say not google.
Google will then index as it likes.
If you took a loos I would look at what you added.
Audit the page then the site.Some change is normal use Moz with
authority tools or SERPS.com to see SERPS changes.Use Moz tools with http://marketing.grader.com
To see what you can do to better your site.
Hope this was of help,
Thomas
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
-
I have updated title 4 days ago but still still showing old title and description on Google serps, How to resolve it?
I have updated the title tag but not showing, Please have look at the view source for this website- https://m.yolobus.in/ I want to show this title and description- <title>Online Bus Ticket Booking | YoloBus India</title> But showing the wrong title and description on google SERP- Title - YoloBus :: Home Description - Delhi Lucknow; Lucknow Delhi; Delhi Gorakhpur; Varanasi Lucknow; Gorakhpur Delhi; Delhi Delhi; Bangalore Bangalore; Manali Manali; Chennai Chennai 7mHsdmu
On-Page Optimization | | AnkitS.19900 -
Review markup not showing up in SERP anymore
Hi all, I have been collecting reviews for a little while now. Ofcourse im hoping to cross the 150 reviews border soon 🙂 But i also added the review markup to my website to show up in organic results. This was working fine for a while. I did not added the markup to my homepage. But now for somehow google is not showing this review markup anymore in search results. So i decided to give the company that is hosting the review tool (google partner also) a call. The informed me that they had a lot of calls and e-mails since 2 weeks from their customers. All with the same problem that review markup is not used in search results anymore. Anyone else had this, or know about this issue?
On-Page Optimization | | J05B0 -
Google crawler showing cache of another page
For the page http://www.thinkdigit.com/top-products/Laptops-and-PCs/top-10-laptops-124.php google is showing another page in cache (http://www.thinkdigit.com/top-products/Ultrabooks/top-10-ultrabooks-153.php). Please let me know how this happened and how to correct it.
On-Page Optimization | | 9dot90 -
Why Moz is showing Duplicate Page Content Issues?
We have a Career Section on our website. For each job post, there is a separate link of "Apply Job". Now Moz's Crawl Diagnostic is showing Duplicate page content for such URLs. Here are two such URLs: http://tiny.cc/em9nyw http://tiny.cc/bq9nyw Can any one please suggest on this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | chandman0 -
Sudden Drop in Impressions
Hi all- I'm a bit confused and hope someone may have an idea. In the last few days, traffic to our site has taken a big hit, so much so that I even got an email from webmaster tools that the home page was receiving significantly less traffic. I can't find anything particular that we changed that should have this much of an effect, but then again, I have been shortsighted in the past 🙂 The site is bulkcandystore.com and if anyone has any thoughts, I would appreciate it. Thanks Ken
On-Page Optimization | | CandymanKen0 -
What's the best practice for handling duplicate content of product descriptions with a drop-shipper?
We write our own product descriptions for merchandise we sell on our website. However, we also work with drop-shippers, and some of them simply take our content and post it on their site (same photos, exact ad copy, etc...). I'm concerned that we'll loose the value of our content because Google will consider it duplicated. We don't want the value of our content undermined... What's the best practice for avoiding any problems with Google? Thanks, Adam
On-Page Optimization | | Adam-Perlman0 -
Should H1s be used in the logo? If they are and it is dynamic on each page to relate to the page content, is this detrimental to the site rather than having it in the page content?
On some sites, the H1 is contained within the logo and remains consistent throughout the site (i.e. the company name is in the of the logo). If the h1 in a logo is dynamic for each page (i.e. on the homepage it is company name - homepage) is this better or worse to have it changed out on the logo rather than having it in the page content?
On-Page Optimization | | CabbageTree0 -
Is this new? Anchors showing in Serps.
I was checking out a keyword today and I noticed several listings on Google that had a line underneath that said, "Jump to keyword". The "keyword" was an href name anchor on the page. Is this new? Should we be including more anchors on our pages now? It makes sense as it helps the reader to navigate the page. Here is a photo of an example: 7XwaQ
On-Page Optimization | | MarieHaynes0