Our Developer Site randomly drops 10+ places in Google searches for our Company Name. Why?
-
Hey everyone,
At Betable, we have a player-facing site and a developer-facing site. We also have a developer-facing blog. We have this issue where our developer-facing site will randomly drop 10+ places in Google's Search results for the keyword "betable". This problem can be reproduced by others and in incognito mode, so it's not just one person's results. Furthermore, the developer-facing blog and our social media accounts all suddenly rank higher than the developer site.
Even stranger, this problem randomly fixes itself after a few days.
This has happened twice so far, and on each occasion there were no changes to the website that would have prompted a drop in rank. After the first drop, we did our best to neutralize any SEOMoz "red alerts" but to no avail, the drop happened again last week.
Can someone help us understand what's going on? Are there ways to avoid this?
Thanks,
Tyler
-
So, as for the first response, I don't see any negative competitive link building on our site. We do have a keyword alert for the brand name in place.
For the second response, I don't think it's testing because there's never a similar problem with any other page. Only our Developer site is having this happen.
Do you have any other ideas? I'd love some more feedback.
Tyler
-
Tylor if you are not making any major changes to the website then there can be two things that I can come up with.
Try to set Google Alert of this keyword and brand name to see if no one is doing low level link building on your website (keep a check on competitors)
And other thing that is not in your hand is Google testing... Google randomly test many things so may be due to this your site is affecting and as you said that it fixes itself then you don’t have to care much about it and it will be normal soon.
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
-
Google Algo Updates
Hi I have noticed strange drops in our rankings, some last Monday 12th & some Sunday 18th - has anyone else experienced anything on these dates? I've seen talk of a possible algo update, but nothing concrete Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Microsites for Local Search / Location Based sites?
Referring to the webinar on SEOMoz about Local Search that was presented by Nifty Marketing (http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/be-where-local-is-going). I have a question my client asked us regarding why we broke out their locations into microsites, and not just used subfolders. So here are the details: The client has one main website in real estate. They have 5 branches. Each branch covers about a 50 mile radius. Each branch also covers a specialized niche in their areas. When we created the main site we incorporated the full list of listings on the main site; We then created a microsite for each branch, who has a page of listings (same as the main site) but included the canonical link back to the main site. The reason we created a microsite for each branch is that the searches for each branch are very specific to their location and we felt that having only a subfolder would take away from the relevancy of the site and it's location. Now, the location sites rank on the first page for their very competitive, location based searches. The client, as we encourage, has had recommendations from others saying this is hurting them, not helping them. My question is this... How can this hurt them when the microsites include a home page specific to the location, a contact page that is optimized with location specific information (maps, text, directions, NAP, call to action, etc.), a page listing area information about communities/events/etc., a page of the location's agents, and of course real estate listings (with canonical back to the main site)? Am I misunderstanding? I understood that if the main site could support the separation of a section into a microsite, this would help local search. Local search is the bread and butter of this client's conversions. AND if you tell me we should go back to having subfolders for each location, won't that seriously hurt our already excellent rankings? The client sees significant visitors from their placement of the location URLs. THANKS!
Algorithm Updates | | gXeSEO
Darlene1 -
My Site PR lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic !
My Site PR5 lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic ! What might be the problem ? Nov 29-2012 my site was hacked very badly and google Blacklisted me for the first time and if you see now " it says, Past 90 days nearly 19 times my site was acted as medium to spread virus" Even thought we checked our FTP, Cpanel or Home Directory - Everything seems good. My domain which was hosted - has other domains in the same network and some are porn - those sites are injecting malicious code ! May be that's the reason or please give me some idea how to improve it !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Any PR Lose? Google Made a Update ! Heavy Traffic, Followed SEOmoz Tips - Dropped to PR4 ?
I followed the rules to minimize the links in the page. Getting Same Traffic to my blog and increased only. But my PR5 to PR4 ? why even 404 Error was reduced o 5 or 6 which i updated now ! not accepting any Text Link ads ! too past 6 months also !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Drop in Visibility and Visitors
I have had several sites have their SE Visibility and Visitor traffic drop of a cliff on August 10. I know there was a Panda update but I cannot determine why these sites incurred such a precipitous drop. Any advice? Mike
Algorithm Updates | | mcsweer0 -
Google automatically adding company name to serp titles
Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I was surprised to see that Google had algorithmically modified my page titles in the search results by adding the company name to the end of the (short) title. <title>About Us</title> became About Us - Company Name Interestingly, this wasn't consistent - sometimes it was "company name Limited" and sometimes just "company name. Anyone else notice this or is this a recent change?
Algorithm Updates | | DougRoberts0 -
Google Rankings Jumping Around
Hi, Since January, the Google rankings for one of our sites has been jumping around. Sometimes it's on page 1, then it disappears and comes back around 1 month later. It's strange because it's only a small section of the site that it's happening to. Every other section of the site is doing really well. Just wondered if anyone else is having this problem, or has had it and can suggest any fixes. There are no technical issues, no changes have been made to the site, all I can think is it's Google messing around with their algorithm? Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Karen
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0