Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Significant "Average Position" dips in Search Console each time I post on Google My Business
-
Hi everyone,
Several weeks ago I noticed that each Wednesday my site's Average Position in Search Console dipped significantly.
Immediately I identified that this was the day my colleague published and back-linked a blog post, and so we spent the next few weeks testing and monitoring everything we did.
We discovered that it was ONLY when we created a Google My Business post that the Average Position dipped, and on the 1st July we tested it one more time. The results were the same (please see attached image).
I am 100% confident that Google My Business is the cause of the issue, but can't identify why. The image I upload belongs to me, the text isn't spammy or stuffed with keywords, the Learn More links to my own website, and I never receive any warnings from Google about the content.
I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this and how I can stop the issue from continuing. I should note, that my Google My Business insights are generally positive i.e. no dips in search results etc.
My URL is https://www.photographybymatthewjames.com/
Thanks in advance
Matthew
-
No worries, you often get the weekly dips when global - no idea why. However, when adding country it all flattens out. If the question is answered or happy please mark it accordingly. Hope that helps.
-
Actually, no. Those big dips each Wednesday don't appear when I select Denmark. So I guess this makes much more sense if I am only targetting a local market such as Denmark.
Thanks for making this clear...
-
Ta, but do you get the big dip now when Denmark is applied?
-
Thanks again.
No, the country filter wasn't set, so it was showing an average position for all countries.
The site is optimised as best as possible as far as I am aware.
-
Apologies my question was unclear - when you extracted your position data from search console. Did you limit it to Denmark? There is navigation that lets you limit to the country. Can you let me know if we are working from that data set on positional changes?
Zero or 0 is worse than 196. 0 means your not ranking at all, whereas 196 means that is where you are ranking position 196.
They are very low rankings, is the site optimised from a title tag, meta description, H1 perspective?
Check out the URL structure component,
https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors
Also see excerpt below:
An Ideally Optimized Web Page
An ideal web page should do all of the following:
- Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
- Include subject in title tag
- Include subject in URL
- Include subject in image alt text
- Specify subject several times throughout text content
- Provide unique content about a given subject
- Link back to its category page
- Link back to its subcategory page (If applicable)
- Link back to its homepage (normally accomplished with an image link showing the website logo on the top left of a page)
Hope that helps.
- Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
-
Hi, and thanks for the fast response.
Yes, I have specifically been targetting Denmark for the past 3-4 years (I set this up in the old Webmaster Tools and it still appears the same). So in short, I am targetting one country.
As for Queries – yes, there are significant drops for certain customer queries. The column on the left with the highest number shows the average page rank on the day I posted on Google My Business, vs. the day before I posted. i.e. event photographer dipped from 0 average page ranking to 196
Does this make things clearer in any way?
| event photographer | 196 | 0 | 196 |
| event photography | 193 | 0 | 193 |
| sports photographer | 188.3 | 0 | 188.3 |
| sports photography | 182 | 0 | 182 |
| james harrison | 101 | 0 | 101 |
| photoshoot københavn | 98 | 0 | 98 |
| copenhagen photos | 97 | 0 | 97 |
| danish courses in copenhagen | 96 | 0 | 96 |
| dhl stafet københavn | 92 | 0 | 92 |
| cph business | 91.5 | 0 | 91.5 | -
Hi
On search console - have you limited that to a country? Or is that "countryless"". As if countryless - not unusal.
Can you clarify? Ideally, limit to the country you are targetting.
Also on top of the overall position dips - is there any corresponding dips for major customer queries you are tracking?
Regards
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
-
Does Google only show high rankings to webmasters?
Hello! I'm using Google Chrome browser. On the browser logged in with the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is ranked on pages 1 to 2. However, in the case of the Google Secret tab and other browsers that have not logged in to the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is only 10 pages. Which one is more reliable?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 1kB_man_YWH
Does it only show higher rankings to webmasters?
Or will you soon be able to see the high ranking that has only been seen by webmasters in other browsers? I desperately need your help. Thank you. I look forward to your kind cooperation.0 -
Does Google and Other Search Engine crawl meta tags if we call it using react .js ?
We have a site which is having only one url and all other pages are its components. not different pages. Whichever pages we click it will open show that with react .js . Meta title and meta description also will change accordingly. Will it be good or bad for SEO for using this "react .js" ? Website: http://www.mantistechnologies.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Does Google want contact numbers in the meta description?!
Reading up it seems like there's complete free reign to enter what you want in the meta description and they are not considered a direct ranking signal However I have added contact numbers to the meta descriptions for around 20 reasonably high ranking pages for my company and it seems to have had a negative effect (taken screen grabs and previous rankings) More strangely when you 'inspect' the page the meta description features the desired number yet when you find the page in the serps the meta description just does not feature the number (page has been cached and the description does not carry on) I'm wondering whether such direct changes are seen as spam and therefore negative to the page?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing1 -
A Branded Local Search Strategy utilizing Microsites?
Howdy Moz, Over and over we hear of folks using microsites in addition to their main brand for targeting keyword specific niches. The main point of concern most folks have is either in duplicate content or being penalized by Google, which is also our concern. However, in one of our niches we notice a lot of competitors have set up secondary websites to rank in addition to the main website (basically take up more room on the SERPS). They are currently utilizing different domains, on different IPs, on different servers, etc. We verified because we called and they all rang to the same competitors. So our thought was why not take the fight to them (so to speak) but with a branding and content strategy. The company has many good content pieces that we can utilize, like company mottos, missions statements, special projects, community outreach that can be turned into microsites with unique content. Our strategy idea is the take a company called "ACME Plumbing" and brand for specific keywords with locations like sacramentoplumberwarranty.com where the site's content revolves around plumber warranty info, measures of a good warranty, plumbing warranty news (newsworthy issues), blogs, RCS - you get the idea...and send both referral traffic and link to the main site. The ideal is to then repeat the process with another company aspect like napaplumbingprojects.com where the content of the site is focused on cool projects, images, RCS, etc. Again, referring traffic and link juice to the main site. We realize that this adds the amount of RCS that needs to be done, but that's exactly why we're here. Also, any thoughts of intentionally tying in the brand to the location so you get urls like acmeplumbingsacarmento.com?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AaronHenry1 -
"NOINDEX,FOLLOW" same as "NOINDEX, FOLLOW" ?
Notice the space between them - I am trying to debug my application and sometimes it put in a space - Will this small difference matter to the bots?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Does posting on Craigslist damage our SEO or reuptation?
We have a website that's a single person barbershop. She has been promoting on Craigslist, and that is outranking the website in the SERPs. However, the craigslist results showing up are actually expired and don't link to anything. They just seem to be cached by Craigslist. My question is, is Craigslist considered to generally not be a good avenue for directing inbound links for services on your site? Or is it a good strategy to use Craigslist to build link traffic for service businesses? I get mixed responses when I search for this. Thanks eYtdHtg.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smallpotatoes0 -
Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?
Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730 -
Seo style="display: none;" ?
i want to have a funktion which shortens text in categorie view in my shop. apple is doing this in their product configurator see the "learn more" button at the right side: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC915LL/A apple is doing this by adding dynamic content but i want it more seo type by leaving the content indexable by google. i know from a search that this was used in the past years by black had seos to cover keywordstuffing. i also read an article at google. i beleive that this is years ago and keywordstuffing is completly no option anymore. so i beleive that google just would recognise it like the way its meant to be. but if i would not be sure i would not ask here 🙂 what do you think?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kynop0