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 -
Google adding main site name to the title tags of pages in the sub folders: How to handle?
Hi community, Ours is a WP hosted website. We have given our site title which reflects across all the website page title suffix. Like "Moz SEO" will be default at the title for pages like "Local SEO - Moz SEO". We have given different page title suffix to our sub-folders' pages like blog and help guides. For blog we have given "Moz blog" as title tag suffix which was working fine. But Google suddenly started showing main website's title as suffix in pages of sub folders. Ex blog: "How to rank better - Moz blog - Moz SEO". Here we can see "Moz SEO" has been added which is not required. How to handle this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Significant drop in traffic
Hi there, We run 3 websites in a similar niche (bins) but tend to have a different area of focus on each site, wheelie, recycling and general litter. They all have unique descriptions, images etc (as much as possible) One of our sites has been a long standing penalty sufferer and we still dont want to give up on it. They are all located on unique IP's but on the same server with the same owner in whois. My question is could our site that has struggled with a penalty in the past be effecting our other sites which havent had problems? I know google likes to see brands and we do regular content, social media etc on all the sites, The drop came today and appears across all our sites. The main site that had the penalty usually gets around 50 visits a day from search, so far today it has had 10 and that is most of the working day now gone. I hope someone can shed a little light on the issues we are facing Thank you Jon
Algorithm Updates | | imrubbish0 -
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 -
VRL Parameters Question - Exclude? or use a Canonical Tag?
I'm trying to figure something out, as I just finished my "new look" to an old website. It uses a custom built shopping cart, and the system worked pretty well until about a year when ranking went down. My primary traffic used to come from top level Brand pages. Each brand gets sorted by the shopping cart and a Parameter extension is added... So customers can click Page 1 , Page 2 , Page 3 etc. So for example : http://www.xyz.com/brand.html , http://www.xyz.com/brand.html?page=1 , http://www.xyz.com/brand.html?page=2 and so on... The page= is dynamic, therefore the page title, meta's, etc are the same, however the products displayed are different. I don't want to exclude the parameter page= completely, as the products are different on each page and obviously I would want the products to be indexed. However, at the same time my concern is that have these parameters might be causing some confusion an hence why I noticed a drop in google rankings. I also want to note - with my market, its not needed to break these pages up to target more specific keywords. Maybe using something like this would be the appropriate measure?
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Website dropping from page 1google uk
Hi all, Firstly let me stress I am not really SEO minded, I know the very basics and that is about it. I am a driving instructor in the UK and have had my website (Wordpress) on page 1 for about 3 years now round the position 3 mark but for the last few months it has been dropping and is now right at the bottom of page 1 so no doubt a few more days and it will vanish completely from page 1 of google.co.uk . I was wondering if someone could just have a quick look at the page to see if they can see anything obvious that wouldn't be seen by me! The search term is " Driving Lessons Worcester " and the page that has always show on page 1 of google is .. http://www.passlee.com/driving-lessons-worcester.html I also had another site on page 1 for about 2 years which was www.drivinglessonsworcester.com this has also vanished to page 5 over the last 3 to 4 months. What really hurts is I made a website for another local instructor using WP and with similar setup to mine and that is now showing as No.1 on page 1 of google.co.uk!! So how is it the website I did for him is doing amazing yet mine is dieing a death when they are setup the same way but obviously different content! As I said I barely know the basics , I am sure a lot of you are thinking " Just go research " which I know I should and no doubt will, but I just wanted someone to have a very quick look to see if there was anything obvious! Kind Regards Lee Francis
Algorithm Updates | | germinus0 -
Why is site dropping in rank after we update it?
One of our sites - supereyes.com - appears to drop in rank after we update it. The client notified us of this today and I've verified that it did indeed drop in Google -- four spots since last week. He says this happens every time we make changes to the site, but then a week later it will go back up and is usually higher than where it was before. I have not verified this, but I'm very worried it may not rise again In the past week, we've posted a new blog entry to their site and we've changed some of the content -- specifically, added their locations to the header, added a contact page and put two testimonials in their sidebar. We've also had someone submitting their site to directories and local business sites like Angie's List and so forth. There are about 16 new backlinks established in the past 2-3 weeks. Also, I should note, traffic is higher than it's ever been, but the client doesn't look at traffic. They only look at their Google results. Can anyone offer any insight into what's going on here and if I need to be worried the site won't rise again in the rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | aloley0 -
Has there been a Google change in the last 24 hours?
We have come in this morning to find our site (paydayuk.co.uk) has suddenly disappeared from their SERPs, we have consistently been ranking in the top 5 for a wide range of search terms but now do not even appear for our brand name of Payday UK where we have been first for many months. Our site is still indexed and we have made no changes for a while as any SEO work is waiting on completion of a CMS system. Looking in https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!categories/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking and there seem to be a lot of people having the same issues but as of yet no answers. I'd also like to add we don’t use black hat techniques so we really don’t understand why we have been penalised. Can anyone help please?
Algorithm Updates | | Sarbs0