Drop in traffic last 24 hours plus title tag not correct
-
Over the last 24 hours we've seen a drop in traffic to our website from Google. Basically since Satursday 19th Nov the traffic has drop about 50% normal levels.
The strange thing I noticed is that when you search Google for a search phrase the snippet Google is showing as the title is not the same as we have in a meta title tag on the page and this is across many pages, not just 1 or two.
Anyone know why this is and what is happening ?
Thanks
-
How strange that today we check our rankings for the profile pages and they are pretty much back to as they were with regards rankings, including pages that we didn't even modify.
I believe either Google had a problem crawling our site, a DNS problem or a problem with the Panda update they released last Friday.
I was 100% sure before that our content, meta etc was correct and couldn't see why we would of been punished.
-
We currently have a total of 7000 incoming links to our site, of which 3,051 are pointing to the homepage.
Those two domains above that I mentioned are nothing to do with our company and I don't know why they are linking to us. Should we inform Google of this linking to our site, if yes - how do I do it.
-
That is not going to look good to any search engine. Do you have many other external links?
-
Further to the previous posts, our problem is 100% related to the title tags and how Google is interpreting them. For example we have a page with a title
Heathrow Hotels - Cheap Hotels Near Heathrow Airport - Cheap London Hotels
but Google is showing the page title as
"Hotels near Heathrow Airport London ( - Cheap Hotels in London" when we do a cache of the page in Google's system
-
I'll look forward to hearing how you go.
I've thrown together a quick 10 question survey to gather some information about the effect of the algorithm change. If you would like to be included you can go to Google algorithm change survey.
Sha
-
I don't think the issue is because something one of our competitors have done to be honest. It is a collection of profile pages that have been hit.
-
Thanks for your useful response. Will let you know how we get on.
-
Well that is great news Tommo so then the next thing to look at is the content itself.
There is an explanation of the two stated algorithmic changes that relate most closely to your issue in the 2nd & 3rd dot points in this Google Webmaster Blog post.
Remembering that your problem is a drop in traffic, it seems that what Google is pulling from your page text is not moving searchers to click through to your site. So the challenge is to ensure that the text on the page includes the most useful information possible, written in such a way that it motivates people to want to buy the product. If you can get this right, whatever Google pulls from the page, it will be more likely to result in clicks.
This is not an easy thing to do, but if you can achieve this aim, you are likely to not only improve the current problem, but also improve sales conversions.
Again, I would run a test with a small number of pages and see what works.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi yes product pages, but the content is freshly written in house with no reference or relevant taken from the source. So we def do not have a dup content issue.
-
Hi again Tommo,
Yes, I would say that it is very likely that what you are seeing is the result of what is loosely referred to as a "panda slap". This is why I suggested that I believe you need to look at the content of your pages.
The clue is that Google does not think your Titles accurately reflect what is on your pages and when it serves what it thinks is accurate, less people are clicking through.
If you want to test this, I would choose a small group of my highest value keywords, roll up my sleeves and work on improving the content. When the improvements are made, if rankings and/or traffic improves for those pages, you have your answer - and a clear strategy for fixing the problem
Also, when you say "product pages" my first thought is "are you using product information that is provided by manufacturers?". If the answer is yes, then you are likely to have a serious problem with duplicate content. Dr Pete talked about duplicate content and panda in his recent blog post Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Maybe the problem is relating to a recent Google tweet http://twitter.com/#!/google/status/137689499198160898
-
The problem appears to relate to all of our product pages. Other location pages are fine (slight drop in positions) as are the generic search phrases.
What should we look to check next ?
-
I believe Rand wrote a blog post about this showing that different title tags were showing up in the SERPs after certain high-authority sites created links to a page with a different Anchor Text than the Title tag. I believe Google was showing the listing in the SERPs with the Anchor Text the other sites had used instead of the page's own Title information.
Check to see if you have suddenly gained a lot of links from somewhere.
-
I wouldn't worry about a reinclusion request just yet. Has one of your competitors done something with their site that caused it to rank above you perhaps? Have you identified if it's just one page that's no longer ranking? What kind of additional information can you find to help pinpoint the traffic decline?
As for Google rewriting title tags, they've been doing that for quite some time now, even to sites like apple.com, depending on your search query.
-
Thanks for your quick response.
These pages have been ranking for very competitive phrases for many years. Just this weekend, we've seen a drop in traffic which in turn made me run through and check the actual search positions for selected phrases.
Looking at Seomoz ranking report for November 17th, 2011, everything was fine at this point. Other pages are ranking OK, just some location/area pages and specific product related pages appear to have been affected somehow
Should we consider a reinclusion request to google as they have reported nothing to us?
-
Hi Tommo,
Without actually looking at your site, it is pure guesswork, but the key here would be that Google thinks what it is serving in the results page provides the searcher with a better insight into the content of your pages than the Titles and descriptions that you have loaded.
This would indicate that perhaps your Titles & descriptions may be misleading or keyword stuffed.
Since the overall result is that serving what Google thinks accurately reflects your page content has lead to a dramatic loss of traffic, I would say it is time to look very closely at the content on your pages and think about improvements that may make them more interesting and useful for users.
Sorry to bring bad news, but I hope it helps,
Sha
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
-
GSC Performance completely dropped off, but Google Analytics is steady. Why can't GSC track my site anymore?
Hey everyone! I'm having a weird issue that I've never experienced before. For one of my clients, GSC has a complete drop-off in the Performance section. All of the data shows that everything fell flat, or almost completely flat. But in Google Analytics, we have steady results. No huge drop-off in traffic, etc. Do any of you know why GSC would all of a sudden be unable to crawl our site? Or track this data? Let me know what you think!
Algorithm Updates | | TaylorAtVelox
Thanks!2 -
Bing & Yahoo Traffic
Traffic to my three sites from Bing and Yahoo has been declining over the past year. Meanwhile traffic from Google has been increasing. A year ago Bing and Yahoo brought in 34% of my traffic. Now it's only 19%. What can I do to optimise specifically for Bing/Yahoo? I have Webmaster tools. Or could it be that my customers (largely aged 60+) are moving over to Google? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | WTH0 -
WT.Srch - parameter recorded as organic traffic?
Hi I have a lot of revenue for yesterdays organic traffic attributed to ?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=slGO&kw=8695 When looking in Google at what this means I have found this: To ensure you can accurately differentiate traffic from paid placements from organic traffic, use the WT.srch=1 parameter in the URL from the referring search engine for all paid searches. This parameter always has a value of 1. Organic searches do not include this parameter in the URL. Note that Search Engine Campaign results are displayed in the Marketing > Search Engine >section of the Webtrends Analytics 9 Complete template, not in the Campaigns section. We no longer use webtrends, what I need to know is, did this traffic/revenue come from organic or paid?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Can hreflang tags still work when the Alternate URL is 301 redirecting to a translated URL in Japanese Characters?
My organization has several international sites 4 of them of which have translated URLs in either Japanese, Traditional Chinese, German & Canadian French. The hreflang tags we have set up on our United States look something like this: But when you actually go to http://www.domain.co.jp/it-security/ you are 301 redirected to the translated URL version: www.domain.co.jp/it-セキュリティ/
Algorithm Updates | | brantmk
My question is, will Google still understand that the translated URL is the Alternate URL, or will this present errors? The hreflang tags are automated for each of our pages and would technically be hard to populate the hreflang with the translated URL version. However we could potentially make the hreflang something customized on a page level basis.0 -
Canonical Tag on All Pages
This is a new one for me. I have a client that has a canonical tag on almost every page of their site. Even on pages that don't need it. For example on http://www.client.com/examplex they had code: Maybe I have missed something, but is there a reason for this? Does this hurt the ranking of the page?
Algorithm Updates | | smulto0 -
Ranking dropped with no page changes
My rank for a keyword went from ranking #1 to #22. The page grade for this keyword is A, there was no site structure changes. The only thing I can see is that tumblr and reddit and other sources are now listed for this keyword and it's difficulty went from the mid-low teens to 28%. However, even given that, I do not a see a reason for this keyword alone to fall so far. It was giving us a ton of traffic, in fact, most of our organic search results came from this term for nearly two months. And 2 weeks ago for no reason, we were pushed to page 3. Has anyone else had similar experiences how do you counter it, and what can we do?
Algorithm Updates | | mozmemberanon0 -
Traffic dropping after blog was added...
We have a major client that gets over a thousand organic visits per day. They also self manage an adwords campaign that generates a few thousand clicks a day. Lat summer they got a new website with a blog. The blog has a couple of teaser paragraphs on the home page with the new blog posts, in addition to lots of static text about the items sold on the site. What has happened is, our organic traffic has changed form the main keywords of what the site sells, to things talked about in the blog. Traffic hasn’t dropped dramatically, but we have lost all our big keywords, for example, a keyword that was generating 40 organic clicks per day a year ago we receive no traffic for now, and much more obscure keyword combinations from the blog are being picked up. Is it the addition of the blog that is causing this problem, or the blog teasers that are on the home page of the site? We like the traffic from the blog terms, but we would like our former main keyword traffic back as well, how can we accomplish this, and what do you think has occurred here? Thanks for your help.
Algorithm Updates | | WhiteHat120 -
How to increase my traffic?
I've performed countless SEO tactics, post tons of unique content. social bookmark tons of it. Facebook, Twitter, etc. Implement new sections to my site all the time in the past month I've implemented a dating site and a discussion forum. Yet my traffic pretty much always stays the same. We are at a level where our site is now the best place on the web to find disability news, and I can't really think of how else to improve it without simply having it more active. Is my niche just too small? http://ablemagazine.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | craven220