Why have I disappeared from 1st page to outside top 100 results?
-
I have been #2 in Google for "plenty more fish" for about 8 years and have now disappeared.
I've been told that I have no manual spam action against my domain www.plentymorefish.net.
Can anyone suggest why I have disappeared and how I might rectify this?
My guess is something to do with the Panda update Sept 27th - EMD (Exact Match Domain), although I don't understand why Google have left a competitors site #1 as this also has exact match domain. Maybe they've just picked one exact match domain to display and have not chosen mine as the .com has a better overall SEO score.
Appreciate any assitance. Thanks.
-
Hey, no worries, glad it helped!
-
Thanks Marcus, that's really helped. I've discovered that old pages Google had indexed are still accessible even though they can't be found via links from the site.
-
I googled a chunk of text of a page, there is probably a lot of other duplication:
"Register free for Plenty More Fish online dating in Scotland"
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus, thanks for your comments.
I realise I've been on borrowed time with this one which is why I introduced a blog nearly 12 months ago to try and improve the content quality but I guess this has not been enough. I know the blog isn't amazing, but certainly more recent post are unique, relevant and well written. http://www.plentymorefish.net/fish-dating/
How did you come across the URL http://plentymorefish.net/scotland ?
I spider the site with Xenu to check it but I can't find that URL.
Thanks
Paul
-
Hey, as Adam said below, your site is a prime candidate for these recent penalties and algorithm updates.
- You have no branded URL anchors pointing to your site
- You have a heavy keyword volume in your anchor text
- You have dodgy sitewide links from sites that I am guessing may also be yours: http://www.lovesecondtimearound.com/
You also have some duplicate content issues
http://plentymorefish.net/scotland / http://www.plentymorefish.net/Dating-in-Scotland.htm
Then, the site has little positive to prop it up in a heavy and competitive industry.
- No natural editorial style links
- No unique or valuable content
Ultimately, sites are having to justify their existence and old strategies of EMD domains and interlinking networks of sites are just not cutting it any longer.
The page 100 thing seem excessive though and more penalty than devaluation so sort out your duplication and linking issues and you should see some return to form but I would be surprised if you could go first page again with some additional content and links to help justify that position.
Sorry to be the barer of bad news!
Marcus
-
Thanks Adam. That confirmed my thoughts really. I just wanted to check if I'd missed something.
-
Sounds like you may have been hit by the EMD update. The update didn't hurt all exact domain sites - only those that Google deemed low quality.
I looked at your backlink profile and found multiple footer links that look like they might be paid links or doorway sites. It's possible that these links played a factor in why your site's ranking was reduced.
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 Mobile site crawl returns poorer results on 100% responsive site
Has anyone experienced an issue where Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results than their Desktop site crawl on a 100% responsive website that passes all Google Mobile tests?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MFCommunications0 -
Home Page Disappears From Google - But Rest of Site Still Ranked
As title suggests we are running into a serious issue of the home page disapearing from Google search results whilst the rest of the site still remains. We search for it naturally cannot find a trace, then use a "site:" command in Google and still the home page does not come up. We go into web masters and inspect the home page and even Google states that the page is indexable. We then run the "Request Indexing" and the site comes back on Google. This is having a damaging affect and we would like to understand why this issue is happening. Please note this is not happening on just one of our sites but has happened to three which are all located on the same server. One of our brand which has the issue is: www.henweekends.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Product page as homepage
Hello, Is it ok that to use the homepage of website as a product page directly where you present all your products on your homepage or can it penalise you to do that ? and in that case, is it better to have a homepage that you don't rank and create a subpage for your product page. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Ranking 1st on Google, but not in top 50 on Bing and Yahoo?
Hi Mozzers, Roughly 2 weeks ago we were ranked:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
#2 on Google for "African American Business Owner Mailing Lists"
#2 on Bing
#2 on Yahoo Now we are ranked
#1 on Google #50 on Bing
#50 on Yahoo I noticed a lot of our other keywords improved on Google during this period but vanished from the other 2 search engines. Other KWs include
"Apartment Owner Mailing Lists " (#4 on Google)
"Community College Mailing Lists (#3 on Google)
etc. What gives?
Thoughts?0 -
Help! Optimizing dynamic internal search results pages...
Hi guys, Now I have always been against this, and opted to noindex internal search results pages to stop the waste of link juice, dupe content, and crawl loops... however, I'm in a discussion with somebody who feels there may be a solution, and that the pages could actually be optimized to rank (for different keywords to the landing pages of course). Anybody come across such a thing before? My only solution would be still to noindex and then build static pages with the most popular search results in but that won't suffice in this case. Any recommendations would be much appreciated 🙂 Thanks, Steve 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0 -
Should we deindex duplicate pages?
I work on an education website. We offer programs that are offered up to 6 times per year. At the moment, we have a webpage for each instance of the program, but that's causing duplicate content issues. We're reworking the pages so the majority of the content will be on one page, but we'll still have to keep the application details as separate pages. 90% of the time, application details are going to be nearly identical, so I'm worried that these pages will still be seen as duplicate content. My question is, should we deindex these pages? We don't particularly want people landing on our application page without seeing the other details of the program anyway. But, is there problem with deindexing such a large chunk of your site that I'm not thinking of? Thanks, everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UWPCE0 -
Google swapped our website's long standing ranking home page for a less authoritative product page?
Our website has ranked for two variations of a keyword, one singular & the other plural in Google at #1 & #2 (for over a year). Keep in mind both links in serps were pointed to our home page. This year we targeted both variations of the keyword in PPC to a products landing page(still relevant to the keywords) within our website. After about 6 weeks, Google swapped out the long standing ranked home page links (p.a. 55) rank #1,2 with the ppc directed product page links (p.a. 01) and dropped us to #2 & #8 respectively in search results for the singular and plural version of the keyword. Would you consider this swapping of pages temporary, if the volume of traffic slowed on our product page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JingShack0 -
Removing pages from index
Hello, I run an e-commerce website. I just realized that Google has "pagination" pages in the index which should not be there. In fact, I have no idea how they got there. For example, www.mydomain.com/category-name.asp?page=3434532
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexGop
There are hundreds of these pages in the index. There are no links to these pages on the website, so I am assuming someone is trying to ruin my rankings by linking to the pages that do not exist. The page content displays category information with no products. I realize that its a flaw in design, and I am working on fixing it (301 none existent pages). Meanwhile, I am not sure if I should request removal of these pages. If so, what is the best way to request bulk removal. Also, should I 301, 404 or 410 these pages? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Alex0