Google Gone Mad or Its Some kind of BlackHat ?
-
I was browsing google.co.in and searched for "Mussoorie Hotels" without quote and came across the attached result! the website sitting on #9 is sitting with a wrong page .. i.e a Hotel Page of other place .. i.e nainital
can someone tell me is there something wrong with google or the guy is using some blackhat technique for his/her website ??
M trying to rank for the keyword "mussoorie hotels" from past 4-5 months Still no luck even in top 5 pages :()
-
But if someone can tell me the exact reason why nainital page is ranking instead of mussoorie will be greatful as it might help me to get my rank back!
I am not sure what other words can be shared to help you better understand the situation.
The travelmasti website has legitimately earned a first page spot for their website. For an unknown reason, the wrong URL is presently showing. You are correct right now there is not a 301 in place. The current page does not show a canonical tag either. It is possible there was a 301 or canonical and it has been removed. It is more likely there is some other issue causing this confusion.
My expectation is Google will resolve the issue soon replace the currently result once they index the /mussoorie.htm page.
The recommended approach for improving your site's rankings is always to focus on your site. Even if you were to get this result removed from Google's index, the improvement to your site is insignificant.
-
@Ryan Kent - I've already checked it twice but neither the page is 301 nor its is using canonical, All results were fine till friday I guess and travelmasti.com/mussoorie.htm was ranking instead of travelmasti.com/nainital.htm for the term mussoorie hotels,
Also, I'll be great full if you can remove the live link from your post
My website with a different URL was thrown on 3rd page last month which was ranking in Top #3 from past 2 years m still not sure whats going on, m sure that my website is safe and is not affected with panda or penguine!
But if someone can tell me the exact reason why nainital page is ranking instead of mussoorie will be greatful as it might help me to get my rank back!
-
I never went that far to check that but I believe you.
-
This seems like a simple case of the wrong page appearing in search results. The correct page is likely: http://www.travelmasti.com/mussoorie.htm
The site has a DA of 60 and at a glance seems legitimate. If you perform a Google.co.in search for "http://www.travelmasti.com/mussoorie.htm" then the URL http://www.travelmasti.com/nainital.htm appears as the first result.
There are several ways this issue can occur and it seems unlikely the site intentionally caused this to happen. The page could have been 301 redirected. The page could have had a canonical tag which was removed. The site is very poorly coded with hundreds of coding errors (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.travelmasti.com%2Fnainital.htm&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)
One of the coding errors could be the problem.
This is a case of a legitimate site ranking for a term it should rank for, but the wrong page is being offered.
-
Hi Jack,
All though I do agree with you in general, I think this case is slightly different:
- According to opensiteexplorer.org there are no backlinks to this page containing the word mussoorie.
- The linkprofile of this page looks very unnatural (almost no branded/url anchors and all are very nice search queries). It is thus very likely that they purchased these links (i.e.use black hat SEO).
Greets,
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online -
Hi wildhawk,
All websites on the first page for this query have quite a high PA and DA. They have thousands of backlinks (probably payed for them considering the anchor texts) and are also ´quite relevant´ for the search query.
The basis is this:
You rank based on your on-page optimization (relevance) and off-page optimization (importance). You may have a page that is far more optimized for a specific keyword and thus are also more relevant. That doesn't mean you outperform the 1-10 results on the combined result of relevance + importance.
Long story short: My guess is that you need to work on your linkprofile.
I wish you all the best and keep in mind that you are trying to compete in an extremely competitive market.
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online -
m seeing this page since today morning till last night it was all fine! and this page was not even in top 50 for this keyword!
-
I love how everyone thinks people use blackhat to get ranked above other people. Anyways he probably just has backlinks for your phrase, thus Google have ranked him there.
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
-
Why are Google SERP Sitelinks "Not Working?"
Hi, I'm hoping someone can provide some insight. I Google searched "citizenpath" recently and found that all of our our sitelinks have identical text. The text seems to come from the site footer. It isn't using the meta descriptions (we definitely have) or even a Google-dictated snippet from the page. I understand we don't have "control" of this. It's also worth mentioning that if you search a specific page like "contact us citizenpath" you'll get a more appropriate excerpt. Can you help us understand what is happening? This isn't helpful for Google users or CitizenPath. Did the Google algorithm go awry or is there a technical error on our site? We use up-to-date versions of Wordpress and Yoast SEO. Thanks! search.png
Technical SEO | | 123Russ0 -
Google indexes page elements
Hello We face this problem that Google indexes page elements from WordPress as single pages. How can we prevent these elements from being indexed separately and being displayed in the search results? For example this project: www.rovana.be When scrolling down the search results, there are a lot of elements that are indexed separately. When clicking on the link, this is wat we see (see attachements) Does anyone have experience with this way of indexing and how can we solve this problem? Thanks! LlAWG4w.png C7XDDYS.png gVroomx.png
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Google Not Indexing Submitted Images
Hi Guys! My question isn't too dissimilar to one asked a couple of years ago, regarding Google and image indexing, but having put my web address into a Google image search, I get a return of 15 images, so something isn't right. 5 months ago I submitted our 'new' site to Google webmaster. We have just moved it onto a Shopify platform. They (Shopify) are good at providing places to add titles and Alt tags and likewise we fill them in (so that box ticked!) However I have noticed over the last couple of months that despite 161 images being submitted, only 51 have been indexed. Furthermore and as I said earlier, when you put our site, site:http://www.hartnackandco.com into Google images, it only returns a total of 15 images. Any suggestions and help would be wonderful! Cheers Nick
Technical SEO | | nick_HandCo0 -
Google Schema Code for Organisation
I've created the Google Schema code for an organisation. Should this go in the template HTML so it would be shown on all pages or just on the home page?
Technical SEO | | CharlBritton0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0 -
Do Google Always Tell You About Penalties?
Hi One of my clients has recently suffered a big decline in rankings on some of their keywords, going from positions in the top 10 to sub 50 for some of their keywords, but not all. Their website is still indexed and there is no link warning from Google. Some of their links from a previous link builder are dodgy and we have already tried to contact the other company for removal but to no avail. Any ideas where I start? So far I planning to increase the branded anchor link and add some content as the site is fairly light on content. Is it worth doing a reconsideration request and mention the bad links incase this is the problem. Has anyone seen any particular good resources on what to do when it appears you have a penalty. None of my other clients have been effected by Panda or Penguin and although I have done some general reading I need to know what action to take and get up to speed FAST! Thanks in advance. Kind regards Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Help - just disappeared from Google
My google listings have disappeared in the last few days. I used to have positions 1, 2, 3, and sometimes 4 on page 1, but since the last update (19th?) it appears I have been dropped? My domainn is www.eseyo.com and the search terms I used to acheive results for were "seo in brentwood" and "seo brentwood" I even created a screencast of my success some time ago for a blog post: http://www.eseyo.com/seo-in-brentwood/ Is there anything that I can do to get these listings back? I have not done anything too naughty in terms of tactics. Purchased a few fiver gigs to get some fake social likes but that is it the rest was all true links and listings. your help and advice most appreciated. Scott.
Technical SEO | | eseyo0 -
What pages of my site does Google rank as the most important?
If I type site:youtube.com into Google, are the results listed by what Google considers to be the most important pages of the site? If I change my sitemap should this order change? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Seaward-Group0