Im I being hit by hummingbird?

[Nicktaylor1]

Hello,

Our website is a private equity firm database, privateequityfirms.com. We rank well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms but unfortunately we have been losing ranking in our main keyword and url "private equity firms" .We have ranked as high as 3rd under wikipedia in recent months. The only real changes we have made are too the sitemap that is auto generated every time some thing is changed in the database.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? im i being hit by hummingbird.

Thank you!

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[Nicktaylor1]

Hey Doug,

First off thanks for the great answer and useful links.  Our organic traffic has been hurting the last two months. When I checked webmaster tools I had no messages and when I checked the links to your site it is saying no data available. Anything you would suggest to try?

Thanks again

[Nicktaylor1]

Thank you to the both of you. The reason I rewrote the question is that, I was ranking in the top six for in December and it says Humming bird came into play around Aug 20 so i didn't think that was the cause.

[FedeEinhorn]

I'm with Peter. As I wrote you Yesterday in the question you posted: http://moz.com/community/q/all-keywords-increasing-rank-except-url-keyword-whats-going-on

[DougRoberts]

Don't think it was Hummingbird.

Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools? Any messages there/manual actions?

I had a quick look at your backlink profile in AHrefs and noticed that something seems to have happened in December It looks like you've lost a whole bucket load of links. See this:

https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/www.privateequityfirms.com

I also checked your domain using SEMRush and noted that in December you lost rankings for a number of keywords so I'd check your assumption that it's just your main keyword that's been affected.

What does your google organic traffic look like over the last couple of months?

So, if you've not already done so I'd check your Google Webmaster tools and take a look at what might have been happening with your backlink profile.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Nick

If you are ranking well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms, then I would consider that a win. That are you are losing rank for "private equity firms" is possibly down to Google understanding the intent of search queries better and deciding that your site is better served and more authoritative for the other terms.

I know that sounds strange as your domain is exact match, but Google won't be ranking because of that. As your site offers a service via subscription to private equity firms then that takes your site one step away from Google providing a result for that query which probably hampers your site compared to other sites that possibly rank higher.

I hope that helps,
Peter