April Google Update?
-
Since April 16 (when Jews ate Matzah) Google hurt one of our clients badly. They are well-known and beloved brand with hundreds of employees and locations across USA.
I can’t see any signal of organic update, or penalty (neither Google Places).- No message on GWT
- Nothing has been changed on and off site.
- All keywords' ranking are looking like this
- All tools showing good analysis: MOZ, Barracuda, MajesticSeo
- Content is good and not duplicated,
- etc.
Do one of you is aware of significant Google update?
What do you think/suggest? -
So here is your issue
run a review, start removing and disavowing all the bad links. A lot of penalties went out in April, e which is why Mozcast was so volatike, there wasn't a major update IMHO.
-
Good point!
I didn't think to check "manual actions" on GWT (because no warning found on message center). This is what I see there:
Manual Actions
Site-wide matches NonePartial matches
Some manual actions apply to specific pages, sections, or links
Reason
Affects
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more.Some incoming links
Request a review -
Have you checked the penalty check tool in webmaster tools?
-
Hello MOZ Rogers – Tuk – Tuk. What about http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change ?
-
-
Barry Schwartz said there looked to be a Panda update starting to roll out about the 14th. These can take a few days to roll out. Lots of comments in the thread from webmasters complaining.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-soft-update-18408.html
-
The subject brand is nothing to do with music. It is moving/storage company.
-
This graph looks awfully similar to yours.
http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/april-2014-google-algorithm-updates-song-lyrics/
-
All of the keywords but brand.
Just-Discovered Links looks good - I have checked them all.
Going thru you "how to diagnose" list:
Something wrong with your analytics program - Nope.
Something to do with Google Algorithm or Webspam Team:
- Manual penalty - How can I know? No email has been received
- Algorithm update - The only thing we found is MP3 / Lyric update
- Normal Google fluctuations - Not seems like
Something to do with Webmaster Tools - Nope.
- There is (and always was) excessive link (on every page) from brother companies/websites. This is normal behaviour of brands.
- Zero warnings on GWT dashboard.
Something wrong with your website - nothing changed recently but I have checked it again. All good.
- In the recent days we found FOUR old "access denied" errors and we fixed them. Can't believe it is that.
-
Mozcast (http://mozcast.com/) shows that the 17th and 18th were pretty chaotic in the SERPs. Take a look at the metrics page on there too. I noticed a few drops on some of my client's profiles but not as significant.
Was this drop for all of your keywords or just one or a few???
Here is an article on how to diagnose a drop in rankings from the team over at ignite. http://ignitevisibility.com/diagnose-drop-in-seo-traffic/
If you haven't done so already. I would look into Google WMT and check out "recently discovered links" just to make sure none of them are harming you in any way.
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
-
Can you index a Google doc?
We have updated and added completely new content to our state pages. Our old state content is sitting in a our Google drive. Can I make these public to get them indexed and provide a link back to our state pages? In theory it sounds like a great link building strategy... TIA!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE1 -
Apps content Google indexation ?
I read some months back that Google was indexing the apps content to display it into its SERP. Does anyone got any update on this recently ? I'll be very interesting to know more on it 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoomGeek0 -
Page position dropped on Google
Hey Guys, My web designer has recommended this forum to use, the reason being: my google position has been dropped from page 1 to page 10 in the last week. The site is weloveschoolsigns.co.uk, but our main business site is textstyles.co.uk the school signs are a product of text styles. I have been told off my SEO company, that because I have changed the school logo to the text styles logo, Google have penalised me for it, and dropped us from page 1 for numerous keywords, to page 10 or more. They have also said that duplicate content within the school site http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/school-signs-made-easy/ has also a contributed to the drop in positions. (this content is not on the textstyles site) Lastly they said, that having the same telephone number is a definate no no. They said that I have been penalised, because google see the above as trying to monopolise on the market. I don’t know if all this is true, as the SEO is way above my head, but they have quoted me £1250 to repair all the errors, when the site only cost £750. They have also mentioned that because of the above changes, the main text styles site will also be punished. Any thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated as I don't know whether to pay them to crack on, or accept the new positions. Either way I'm very confused. Thanks Thomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TextStylesUK0 -
Google Ranking Wrong Page
The company I work for started with a website targeting one city. Soon after I started SEO for them, they expanded to two cities. Optimization was challenging, but we managed to rank highly in both cities for our keywords. A year or so later, the company expanded to two new locations, so now 4 total. At the time, we realized it was going to be tough to rank any one page for four different cities, so our new SEO strategy was to break the website into 5 sections or minisites consisting of 4 city-targeted sites, and our original site which will now be branded as more of a national website. Our URL structures now look something like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cpapciak
www.company.com
www.company.com/city-1
www.company.com/city-2
www.company.com/city-3
www.company.com.city-4 Now, in the present time, all is going well except for our original targeted city. The problem is that Google keeps ranking our original site (which is now national) instead of the new city-specific site we created. I realize that this is probably due to all of the past SEO we did optimizing for that city. My thoughts are that Google is confused as to which page to actually rank for this city's keyword terms and I was wondering if canonical tags would be a possible solution here, since the pages are about 95% identical. Anyone have any insight? I'd really appreciate it!0 -
What is next from Google Panda and Google Penguin?
Does anyone know what we can expect next from Google Panda/Penguin? We did prepare for this latest update and so far so good.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jjgonza0 -
Google Page Rank Dead?
Does PR still work? I have sites that have PR3 and get almost no traffic and sites that are PR1 and get thousands of uniques per month. My PR on my main sites haven't moved for about 7 years, even though we've grown significantly. I know lots of you are going to jump in with get the MOZ toolbar, which I already have done, and I agree, it's great ... But can anyone tell me about what's going on with Google PR? Is it still active? Or has Google abandoned? I noticed that the Google toolbar is not even available for Google Chrome. That should say something ... If you like this question, do me a favor, and give me a THUMBS UP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold2 -
Google Places Alternatives
Hello, I have been looking into Google places alternatives. Any suggestions? On a related note. I am based in the UK and looking to add a UK business to Bing Local but having read this thread ( - http://www.bing.com/community/maps/f/12264/t/653672.aspx -) I don't think it's possible. Anyone had any luck or experience? Cheers dj
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Ranking Factors for Google
Yesterday a blog post appeared on SEOMOZ titled 'A Tale Of Two Studies' - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-tale-of-two-studies-google-vs-bing-clickthrough-rate It suggested some of the ranking factors Google and Bing take into account when ranking. A few of them I want to talk about: Social Signals, Age of Domain and H1 HTML Tag So I thought age of domain and H1 both had some weight in Google? I guess not! And social signals, now I know it gives some weight but its right up there in the list for both SE's, so should getting likes, tweets, plus1's now be part of my everyday link building? Bing-Google-CTR-Infographic-e1321978731479.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0