Hit by Google
-
My site - www.northernlightsiceland.com - has been hit by google and Im not sure why. The traffic dropped 75% last 24 hours and all the most important keywords have dropped significantly in the SERP. The only issue I can think of are the subpages for the northern lights forecasting I did every day e.g. http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast-iceland-3-oct-2012/ I have been simply doing a copy/paste for 1 month the same subpage, but only changing the top part (Summary) for each day. Could this be the reason why Im penalized? I have now simply taken them all down minus the last 3 days (that are relevant). What can I do to get up on my feet again? This is mission critical for me as you can imagine.
Im wondering if it got hit by this EMD update on 28 sept that was focusing on exact match domains http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4501349-1-30.htm
-
Hmm how did e.g. normal local newspaper then survive - most news articles are some 200-300 words of orginal text + 1-2 images. The rest are ads and excerpt of other relevant news etc. As far as I understand the article you send then it is about “above-the-fold” i.e. the only think you see when you land on a page are ads as the main source. On my site I only use the sidebar - in similar manner as newspapers - and the rest is simply information on various travelling arrangement possible. That is what a niche site this is all about - collecing all of this into one place and solving the travelers problems of finding it in various places. This creates value for the end-user.
-
Placing the nofollow will not necessarily solve the problem, that Google for example does not classify the remaining content on your website good enough to rank well.
If you take any page on your site and strip out external links, there is hardly any original content left.
I would read this article which covers the user experience and algorithm change from January, and I think Google has demoted your site based on that.
-
Irving - thanks a lot for pointing me into the direction of the "follow" on the paid ads. Very helpful - I thought I had it covered with no-follow but found out it wasnt. So probably that is the main reason for the penalty. Did you see any other violations on the guidelines? - i was trying to fix all the "not found" errors etc yesterday:) Again thanks a lot for the help:)
-
I though the newest versions of Wordpress automatically takes care of this canonical tag issue?
-
Correct - the no-follow link needs to be on the outbound link
-
I have discovered something interesting. I read article on paid ads: http://www.feedthebot.com/bad-ads-affect-rankings.html
It says it is ok to have ads as I thought but it needs to have a no-follow. Then I looked at my code and it seems like the no-follow tag is at the wrong place so it is not no-follow - isnt this correct? Here is a typical code in a widget on the side:
| id="text-12" class="widgetblock widget_text">class="textwidget"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>http://www.hotelranga.is" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-ad','http://www.hotelranga.is-special-offer-new']); "> |
| | src="http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HotelRanga30off.jpg" width="280" height="280" border="0" style="border:0px solid black; margin-left: 2px;margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px;" rel="nofollow" alt="northern lights forecast" align=middle /> |
| | | -
it aggregates into one place all the offers the local industry has into one place. That is the main value. Not necessarily creating a lot of text on each provider e.g. a hotel. People see this teaser - and if they like the teaser they click through to the local provider to learn more.
-
Im not really having much of a link building strategy - it has normally just happened naturally e.g. other sites point to this site as the most informative northern light site in Iceland and also because Im the only one giving nortern lights forecast in the country etc.
-
I think you should build out your content - for example if you look at this URL there is hardly any content on it and a large count of external links. One could almost argue, that your site being an intermediary has no real value to a user.
-
Thanks a lot for your feedback. Im a bit of a new in this all so all feedbacks are very valuable for me:) thx thx
It does not look like the crawl rate has dropped. Looking at the webmaster - pages crawled per day - the graph is quite similar as before.
Yes I have some errors - i did not consider them material - primarily "not found" errors but yes some others. Did not know how to fix it
Im a typical aggregation site for some local travel businesses - so no affiliate - but yes just like any other company these local travel companies want to advertise their business and I set up content so people can find all the tours etc at the same place. All the content is orginal and in fact it simply gives a view of how much of these services are available.
Not sure what Irving means by "having follow links to paid advertising" - is it against the guidelines to have ads companies pay for? It is just the same as having google ads that companies are paying for?
-
I don't think it is the canonical. I would first look at GWMT (crawl rate dropped? errors increased?) and then look at Google Analytics as well.
For what it's worth, your current site has duplicate keywords and descriptions and plenty of errors (JavaScript).
You could have very well been dropped due to a manual review - your site looks very much like an affiliate with plenty of advertising and not much original content (that was at least my initial opinion)
-
Just to clarify the canonical tag issue - you have a slash in the canonical tag www.northernlightsiceland.com/, but the htaccess redirects all slashes to no slashes.
-
You are violating Google guidelines in several ways including having follow links to paid advertising.
You need a good SEO review - take this for example:
Canonical tag on homepage is rel="canonical" href="http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/" />
but then http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/ redirects to http://www.northernlightsiceland.com
-
There was recently EMD and Penguin update. What was your link building strategy? If you builded your links everytime with same anchor text or was building links to low quality directories or social bookmarks?
There are many factors that may affect your website. I advise you to do a advanced review on Google webmaster guidelines here:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
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
-
Page missing from Google index
Hi all, One of our most important pages seems to be missing from the Google index. A number of our collections pages (e.g., http://perfectlinens.com/collections/size-king) are thin, so we've included a canonical reference in all of them to the main collection page (http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all). However, I don't see the main collection page in any Google search result. When I search using "info:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all", the page displayed is our homepage. Why is this happening? The main collection page has a rel=canonical reference to itself (auto-generated by Shopify so I can't control that). Thanks! WUKeBVB
Technical SEO | | leo920 -
My some pages are not showing cached in Google, WHY?
I have website http://www.vipcollisionlv.com/ and when i check the cache status with tags **site:http:vipcollisionlv.com, **some page has no cache status.. you can see this in image. How to resolve this issue. please help me.
Technical SEO | | 1akal0 -
Title in google organic display
The title (top link) in my organic result in google search has my page title then a dash and another keyword. This keyword is not related to the search result. It may discourage clicks. Where does google get that and how can i change it? For example: Page Title - unrelated keyword
Technical SEO | | bhsiao
url
link description0 -
Google disavow tool ( how long does it take ? )
Hello, I disavowed some of my links about three months but still see them in my link profile, using OSE? How long does it take for Google to make them nofollow. Thanks
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Google showing wrong title
Hi, Can anyone assist a newbie please? My keyword 'Security Systems' is giving me position 1 on page 1, but the title it is using is not the page title. I am assuming for some reason it has made it up, please see below. The actual title tag says - <colgroup><col width="420"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | DaddySmurf
| Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police Approved | CSS | Google is showing - Compound Security Systems: Wireless Security Systems | Battery ... <cite>www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/</cite>Manufacturers & suppliers of The Mosquito Device & Professional industry compliant and Police recommended battery powered wireless security systems.Contact us - Mosquito Anti-Loitering Devices - Security Equipment - Installers<iframe class="SEOmoz-iframe" src="chrome-extension://eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp/html/serpbar.html#{" settings":{"dmr":false,"dmt":false,"mr":true,"mt":true,"serp-overlay":true,"toolbar-enabled":true,"subdomain-metrics":false,"serp-panel-open":true,"toolbar-position":"bottom"},"lsdata":{"feid":1245,"fipl":315,"fmrp":4.717881718426137,"fmrr":3.169235978744307e-9,"ftrp":5.245402699173709,"ftrr":8.283399271183101e-8,"fuid":15756,"pda":47.20670031521297,"peid":1266,"pid":315,"pmrp":4.634793943915049,"pmrr":1.137485303730264e-7,"ptrp":4.949510322693934,"ptrr":1.6938187788875737e-7,"puid":15777,"ueid":510,"uemrp":4.693787066897207,"uemrr":2.520503065617982e-10,"uid":1060,"uipl":191,"ujid":1038,"umrp":4.96103855611017,"umrr":5.477715129904515e-10,"upa":55.929113684261466,"utrp":6.066855084050327,"utrr":2.1655670926371268e-10},"user":{"level":"pro","options":{},"proenabled":true,"aclurl":"http:="" moz.com="" users="" level?src="mozbar","loginURL":"https://moz.com/login","logoutURL":"https://moz.com/logout","apiRequest":"url-metrics","cols":"133146078688","expired":false,"accessId":"pro-RGFkZHlTbXVyZg%3D%3D","expires":1374249469,"signature":"M%2Bh%2FXh4OS%2BAMtT2j6kuntWSTvNI%3D","displayName":"DaddySmurf"},"serp":1,"host":"www.compoundsecurity.co.uk"}"" scrolling="no"></iframe> If anyone can tell me how to correct this, i would very much appreciate it. Regards, Si0 -
Google authorship what am i doing wrong
Hi, i am using google authorship on my site but when i use the testing tool it is not working. before the upgrade we had it working fine but now it does not seem to work. we have our google plus account pointing to the site and the writer we are trying to add is not coming up on the tool here is the code we are putting on the page Google+ and the page in question is here http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-laurel-is-determined-to-take-action when i check the tool i get the following Authorship Testing ResultAuthorship is not working for this webpage.andAuthorship rel=author MarkupCannot verify that rel=author markup has established authorship for this webpage.the tool i am using to check is http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippetsany help to solve this problem would be great. i am using joomla
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google Webmaster tools error?
So I am trying to set the URL preference in google webmaster tools for my site. However when I try to save it it tells me to verify that I own the site. I have already done this so where can I go to verify I own the site exactly? Maybe I am wrong and I have not done this already but even on the homepage of webmaster tools I don't see an option to "verify".
Technical SEO | | ENSO0 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0