What happened with Hayneedle's rankings?
-
Hayneedle is an e-commerce company that operates 200 niche sites selling indoor and outdoor home products. They were ranking at the top of the first page for most terms related to their sites (fire pits, fountains, benches, etc.), but all of a sudden at the end of April they lost their rankings, getting dropped to page 4 or lower for tons of their sites (barstools.com, patiofurnitureusa.com, adirondackchairs.com, benches.com, etc.).
Does anybody know what caused this? Other than one thread on an SEO forum, we haven't been able to find any discussion about it online. It seems like cross-linking between the sites could have been a problem here, but we'd love to hear thoughts from the experts here on this. Our company is using the same business model of one brand with niche sites and we want to avoid anything like this happening to us.
-
Seeing Hayneedle sites back in the SERPs today. Looks like they removed the heavy crosslinking.
Strange that they seem to be at full previous rankings. Maybe this is old data?
I would have expected them to have lost some power without cross linking or something else devalued.
-
Very possible, I've never even seen one of their sites before so am completely unfamiliar with them.
Fell into the same trap I've seen others fall into before and attribute everything to a known change if it occurs around the same time and not think whether it could have been something different.
Glad you're keeping me honest
This is interesting though - http://www.jobmagic.com/job/Internet-Marketing-Internship-SEO-Job-Omaha-NE-68114-US-6904531.html -
-
Hayneedle's drop didn't occur on one of the dates of a Panda update. Unrelated to Panda is my bet.
-
Doh, apologies, I didn't read the question right.
Never the less, looks like it could be Panda.
Hard to pinpoint exactly what Google doesn't like about it. Their main site does look a massive link farm with that many domains and links on it.
I think they've just been caught in the cross-fire rather than having done anything wrong, but as the main sign of a link farm is the interlinking of sites I would guess that, though can't be sure (doesn't seem to be anything dodgy in their code, not looked into their link profile and there's not too much else they could really do to be more authoratative with content).
If you have a similar site then I'm not sure what I would do to demonstrate that it was simply a directory of your other sites.
Sorry I couldn't be more help.
-
Nothing has happened to our sites - we're not Hayneedle. Our sites are fine (currently). We're trying to figure out what happened to Hayneedle so we can avoid the same thing happening to us.
-
All I can say is that the seem to have been smacked by google. The sites that compete in my SERPs dropped from #1 or #2 rankings down to fourth or fifth page.
They had lots of heavy cross linking on their site. For years I have felt that it was for SERP manipulation rather than cross-selling because lots of the cross-linked sites were irrelevant.
But, I honestly don't know what happened... they lost rankings on all of their estores so Google must have caught them in some type of sin and demoted all of their sites.
-
Sounds like Panda got you - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html - It's designed to get rid of content farm style sites and thin affiliates.
It seemed to get a 3rd update towards the end of last week (or a little before) which may be what caught you.
Good news is Google tells you what they want you to do about it - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
Bad news is there are very few success stories and you're at the mercy of Google as to when they'll run the check again (the update is not part of the main algorithm but a supplemental one run intermittently).
The fact it's hit all of your sites suggests that you're not recognised as high quality sites or appeared to be a farm. Did all your sites link to each other in some 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
-
Search ranking for a term dropped from 1st/2nd to 106th in 3 months
Hello all, Just a couple notes first. I have been advised to be vague on the search term we've dropped on (in case this page ranks higher than our homepage for it). If you search for my name in Google though you should be able to figure out where I work (I'm not the soccer player). While I am looking for an answer, I've also posted this question on a couple other forums (see https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4934323.htm and https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/AQLD7lywuvo/2zfFRD6oGAAJ) which have thrown up more questions than answers. So I have posted this as a discussion. We've also been told we may have been under a negative SEO attack. We saw in SEMRush a large number of backlinks in October/November/December - at about the same time we disavowed around 1m backlinks (more on this below) but we can't see this reflected in Moz. We just got off a call with someone at Moz to try and work this out and he suggested we post here - so here goes... On 4th October for the search term 'example-term' we dropped from number 2 to number 9 on Google searches (this was confirmed in Google Search Console). We also paid an external SEO consultant to review our site and see why we are dropping on the term 'example-term'. We've implemented everything and we're still dropping, the consultant thinks we may have been penalised in error (as we are a legitimate business and we're not trying to do anything untoward). In search console you could see from the graphs on the term we used to rank 1st and 2nd (you could go back 2 or 3 years and still see this). The thing we do find confusing is that we still rank very highly (if not 1st) for 'example-term + uk' and our brand name - which is very similar to 'example-term'. Timeline of events of changes: 2nd October 2018 midday: Added a CTA using something called Wisepops over the homepage - this was a full screen CTA for people to pledge on a project on our site helping with the tsunami in Indonesia (which may have had render blocking elements on). 4th October: we added a Google MyBusiness page showing our corporate headquarters as being in the UK (we did flag this on the Google MyBusiness forums and both people who responded said adding a MyBusiness page would not affect our drop in rankings). 4th October: dropped from number 2 to number 9 on Google searches (this was confirmed in Google Search Console) 4th October: Removed the Wisepops popup 5th November: Server redirect so anything coming in on / was redirected to a page without a / 12th November: Removed around 200 junk pages (so old pages, test cms pages etc that were live and still indexed). Redirects from any 404s resolved 19th November: Updated site maps and video site maps to reflect new content and remove old content. Reviewed the whole site for duplicate meta tags and titles and updated accordingly with unique ones. Fixed issues in Google Search Console for Google search console for 404 and Mobile usability. Removed embedded YouTube video from homepage. 11th December: Removed old content and content seen as not useful from indexing; 'honey pot' pages, old blog, map pages, user profile pages, project page ‘junk pages which have little SEO value’ (comments, contact project owner, backers, report project) from indexing, added ‘no-follow’ to widgets linking back to us 3rd January 2019: Changed the meta title from to remove 'example-term' (we were concerned it may have been seen as keyword stuffing) 7th January: Disavow file updated to refuse a set of external sites powered by API linking to us (these were sites like example-term.externalsite.co.uk which used to link to us showing projects in local areas - our SEO expert felt may be seen as a ‘link farm’) 11th January: Updated our ‘About us’ page with more relevant content 15th January: Changed homepage title to include 'example-term' again, footer links updated to point to internal pages rather than linking off to Intercom, homepage ordering of link elements on homepage changed (so moving external rating site link further down the page, removing underlines on one item that was not a link, fixed and instance where two h1 tags were used), removed another set of external Subdomains (i.e. https://externalsite.sitename.co.uk) from our system (these were old sites we used to run for different clients which has projects in geographical areas displayed) 18th January: Added the word 'example-term' to key content pages We're at a loss as to why we are still dropping. Please note that the above changes were implemented after we'd been ranking fine for a couple years on the 'example-term' - the changes were to try and address the drop in ranking. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Nobody15554510997900 -
Dodgy links across top ranking sites in a certain industry - Could this be negative link building?
Hi, I've noticed repeated low value / high spam backlinks directing to a site that I manage, and despite disavowing, new links showing similar anchor text keep appearing. See sample in the table below: <colgroup><col width="514"> <col width="407"> <col width="364"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Alexanders
| biz.mfso.info/files/images/vertical-blinds-for-bifold-doors.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers vertical blinds for bifold doors |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/install-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers install vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/cutting-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cutting vertical blinds |
| rre.uere.info/files/images/high-quality-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds rre.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| hja.uere.info/files/images/cost-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds hja.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds | I also looked across 5 high ranking sites in the same industry and noticed they too have these 'dodgy' links in their backlink profiles. Could this be negative link building? If so, does anyone know a way to trace it or get it stop?0 -
Do the links from top websites' forums boost in-terms of backlinks?
If we get any backlinks from discussions/forums of top websites like wordpress and joomla forums; do they count as valid and authority improving backlinks? I mean about the dofollow links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Google says 404s don't cause ranking drops, but what about a lot of them
Hello, According to Google here, 404s don't cause rankings to go down. Our rankings are going down and we have about 50 or so 404s (though some may have been deindexed by now). We have about 300 main products and 9000 pages in general on this Ecommerce site. There's no link equity gained by 301 redirecting the 404s. A custom 404 page has been made linking to the home page. There's nothing linking to the pages that are 404s Provided that no more 404s are created, can I just ignore them and find the real reason our rankings are going down?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
How can I recover from an 'unnatrual' link penalty?
Hi I believe our site may have been penalised due to over optimised anchor text links. Our site is http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk It seems we have been penalised for the key word 'Roller Banner' as the over optimised anchor text contains key word 'Roller Banner' or 'Roller Banners'. We dropped completely off page 1 for 'Roller Banner', how would I recover from this error?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Should i buy this domain because it has a keyword that im trying to rank for?
Im trying to rank for a keyword and i saw that this domain is available the top listing under this search team is a domain authority 14 and according to seo site explorer has 1 page linking to it and its a no follow link. Would it make since to buy this domain optimize it and forward it back to my main site or is this bad to do.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gslc0 -
Any Benefit to Artificially Boosting the CTR for rank?
I've read articles that indicates Google will provide a higher rank to listing with higher click through rates (i.e, http://bit.ly/132mUd0, "If a search result achieves a higher than average click through rate then it may be given a higher ranking.") First, this seems like a chicken-and-egg scenario: it seems like results with higher rank will have higher CTR from increased exposure, no? Second, if this was an accurate ranking signal, it seems like it would be so easy to black hat (as well as other web usage signals, such as goal conversions and time on site). I'd just pay some Indian dude to search for my website on different IPs and click through in the SERP. Your thoughts about this scenario?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
If I were to change the geographic keyword such as "foreclosures in Dallas" on 20 related blogs to "foreclosures in Los Angeles" what would happen?
In other words I'm wondering if someone built up an internet presence for their company through multiple websites over the years and then decided to move to another part of the united states, would it work to change all the keywords to the new location? Would that work toward getting them ranked in the new area or would you have to create entirely new websites? Thanks guys.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | whorneff3100