Sudden drop in all (keyword) +widgets keywords, after years of dominating

[kledge]

Google seems to be following up on either Panda 2.xx ..or we just got hit with link devaluation. We lost rankings with most of our keywords, where we were ranked 1,2,3 ..first page for most. Now we have dropped on the first page for competitive keywords, and even some to the seconds page.

We haven't changed anything on the site itself...and those ranking over us in some areas have very little quality content, and links. Sites like "keyword.info"..or "keyword-keyword.org", etc. seem to be gaining some of the top spots.

This comes years after solidly dominating our niche, and steady traffic. My theory is the latest Google changes are affecting link value, and perhaps we simply got some authority loss...but was wondering if you could shed any light on this issue?

Thanks.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Panda 2.2 is a much more subtle change than Panda 1.0 or 2.0 were. .  A few of us in the industry believe that Panda 2.2 was rolled out this past week.  There's subtle changes for many sites, and that's what it seems to be, however it's both too early to tell, and as EGOL points out, there are many other possible causes for any single site.

[EGOL]

My theory is the latest Google changes are affecting link value, and perhaps we simply got some authority loss...but was wondering if you could shed any light on this issue?

Without more detailed information, our guess would be about the same as yours.

This comes years after solidly dominating our niche

... or maybe your competitors are working harder to move up the SERPs than you are working to maintain them.

Sites like "keyword.info"..or "keyword-keyword.org", etc. seem to be gaining some of the top spots.

Keywords in the domain can help a little, but are usually only of real value when your domain is an exact match for the query.  Most of my sites are KW.com and I believe that the ranking value of the KW in the domain has declined recently.