My site was number 1 for competetive keyword on Google now completely gone- what should I do?
-
WHat is the best way to determine if I have somehow been delisted from Google?
-
xx
-
There are many variables with comparing your old site to the new one. Ideally you simply leave the old site up and can compare it both visually and by crawling it with the new one, assuming this was a simple change of hosts.
Regarding checking links, there are many services and none of them are comprehensive. They all work by various methods of crawling the web which is tens of millions of websites with trillions of pages. If you want the most comprehensive report you can combine the following tools:
Google, Bing, OSE, Raven, Majestic and AHREFs. Each of these tools will miss some links captured by the other tools. It's the nature of trying to collect data on such a large data source that is in a constant state of change.
-
Wow thanks for the great responses - it is really appreciated
I think I may see something that may affected this. When I do back link check there are NONE. I just purchased and moved this site to my hosting about 2 weeks ago.
I am thinking the backlink pages that had been put there by the former owner were not moved over properly by my web guy.
I am waiting for our webmaster to start working (he is in Vietnam) tio make sure the site was copied over exactly.
can you recommend
a. a software or method to determine if a site has been copied exactly as it was at the former hosting
b. the most reliable back link check service
THANKS AGAIN!
-
Wow thanks for the great responses - it is really appreciated
I think I may see something that may affected this. When I do back link check there are NONE. I just purchased and moved this site to my hosting about 2 weeks ago.
I am waiting for our webmaster to start working (he is in Vietnam) tio make sure the site was copied over exactly.
Can anyone recommmend
a. a software or method to determine if a site has been copied exactly as it was at the former hosting
b. the most reliable back link check service
THANKS AGAIN!
-
There are many possibilities. The best best would be having a SEO consultant experienced with diagnosing penalties take a look at your site. If you wish to try and resolve the issue here are the first steps:
-
Are there any other keywords affected?
-
Have their been any changes made to the page which was the target URL for that keyword? Have their been any other changes made on your site related to that keyword? For example, adding a new article or page using that keyword?
-
What changes have been made on your site in the past 60 days? Include any coding changes, hosting changes, Google Analytics or WMT changes, etc.
-
Have you, or anyone on your behalf (employee, SEO consultant, web developer, etc) violated any of Google's Guidelines? Built manipulative links, hide keywords using CSS tricks, etc.
-
-
Don't be too quick to think the worst.
Recently one of my clients changed their geo settings they ranked but not in the UK.
Send me the URL and the target keyword and I will take a quick look.
Justin
-
Perhaps your link building company got a lot of spammy links with that exact anchor test and now Google is responding in kind. Find these links and try to get rid of them or work on getting quality links to counteract the spammy links.
-
Just yesterday.
It was #1 for a long time prior now it s not in the first 6 pages. It is still indexed via site:URL but it not where it has been for a many months even years
-
Google makes around 50 changes to their algorithm each month. Any one of the changes could have negatively impacted your site. Most commonly, one of the bigger changes such as Panda or Penguin is involved, but that is not always the case.
The site search mentioned by Crimson will indicate whether or not you have been removed from Google's index, but that is rarely the case.
Diagnosing penalties can be quite complex. If you can take a look at your Google Analytics and determine the exact date your traffic dropped on the given keyword, that information could be helpful.
-
You can do a 'site:yoururl' search in Google to see if your pages are still indexed. If you feel you may have received a penalty then a full site audit wil be necessary.
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
-
Issue with site not being properly found in Google
We have a website [domain name removed] that is not being properly found in Google. When we run it through Screaming Frog, it indicates that there is a problem with the robot.txt file. However, I am unsure exactly what this problem is, and why this site is no longer properly being found. Any help here on how to resolve this would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo1 -
Google is alternating what link it likes to rank on wordpress site and
Hi there, I'm experiencing a problem where google is pick and choosing different links structures to rank my Wordpress site for my main keywords. The site had pretty good #1 rankings for a long time but recently I noticed Google is choosing to rank the page in one of two ways. Let me just say that the original way where it held good rankings looked like this for example: flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets/ this is just an example it' is not my site. And when google decides to switch it up it uses this link structure:flowers.com > weddings (this still points to this link flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets when I hover my mouse over it) however this link structure that never appeared before and now does, usually has much lower rankings. Please note it's not both link structures being ranked at the same time for the keywords. It's one or the other that google is currently alternating in ranking and I believe it's hurting the sites position.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | z8YX9F80
I'm not sure if this is a wordpress settings thats gone wrong or what the problem is but I do know when shows the expanded and descriptive link structure flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets the rankings are higher and in 2nd place. I'm hoping by rectifying this I can regain back my position. I'm very grateful for any insight you could offer on why this is happening and how I could fix it. Thank you. PS Wordpress site has several SEO plugins0 -
What will happen if we 302 a page that is ranking #1 in google for a high traffic term?
We're planning to test something and we want to 302 a page to another page for a period of time. The question is, the original page is ranking #1 for a high traffic term. I want to know what will happen if we do this? Will we lose our rank? Will the traffic remain the same? Ultimately I do not want to lose traffic and I do not want to 301 until it has been properly tested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxcdn0 -
What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?
Hi All, I recently started using Google Alerts more and more and while sites I support never appear there (not surprising) I recently noticed few very poor and low quality sites that do. This site for example appears quite a bit in its niche. So to my questions... What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Why is my site not getting crawled by google?
Hi Moz Community, I have an escort directory website that is built out of ajax. We basically followed all the recommendations like implementing the escaped fragment code so Google would be able to see the content. Problem is whenever I submit my sitemap on Google webmastertool it always 700 had been submitted and only 12 static pages had been indexed. I did the site query and only a number of pages where indexed. Does it have anything to do with my site being on HTTPS and not on HTTP? My site is under HTTPS and all my content is ajax based. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | en-gageinc0 -
Number of images on Google?
Hello here, In the past I was able to find out pretty easily how many images from my website are indexed by Google and inside the Google image search index. But as today looks like Google is not giving you any numbers, it just lists the indexed images. I use the advanced image search, by defining my domain name for the "site or domain" field: http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search and then Google returns all the images coming from my website. Is there any way to know the actual number of images indexed? Any ideas are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau1 -
Mobile Site Outranking Main Site
Hi, We have recently been hit with a problem regarding our mobile site, where it is outranking our main site. This is causing a drop in orders and ranknings for our main site. It would appear that google has indexed our mobile site and so the two are now competing against each other. Our main site is on a .co.uk and our mobile site on a .mobi, but we have now taken down the mobile site until we get this sorted. Does anyone else have any experience of this happening and how to stop it happening again? Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steve251 -
Google & Bing not indexing a Joomla Site properly....
Can someone explain the following to me please. The background: I launched a new website - new domain with no history. I added the domain to my Bing webmaster tools account, verified the domain and submitted the XML sitemap at the same time. I added the domain to my Google analytics account and link webmaster tools and verified the domain - I was NOT asked to submit the sitemap or anything. The site has only 10 pages. The situation: The site shows up in bing when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 1 (the home page) The site shows up in google when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 30 Please note Google found 30 pages - the sitemap and site only has 10 pages - I have found out due to the way the site has been built that there are "hidden" pages i.e. A page displaying half of a page as it is made up using element in Joomla. My questions:- 1. Why does Bing find 1 page and Google find 30 - surely Bing should at least find the 10 pages of the site as it has the sitemap? (I suspect I know the answer but I want other peoples input). 2. Why does Google find these hidden elements - Whats the best way to sort this - controllnig the htaccess or robots.txt OR have the programmer look into how Joomla works more to stop this happening. 3. Any Joomla experts out there had the same experience with "hidden" pages showing when you type site:www.domain.com into Google. I will look forward to your input! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0