Database Crash affecting our rankings
-
Here is one for you. We had a database crash, and was down for an hour and 15 minutes, on Dec 18th. During this time our system automatically sent out a 301 redirect to our product home page. (iboats.com/boat-parts-accessories/dm/)
On Dec 24th I noticed a huge ranking drop on a lot of our keywords, and some keywords that were serving up the redirect page from our database crash, in place of its normally ranked page.
So my assumption is that Google was crawling our site during the database crash and caching the redirect pages in place of our regularly ranked pages. So when a search query is made that would normally display our ranked page, it is now displaying the redirect page from the crawled cache.
And on other keywords where we normally would rank for, Google no longer has that page cached, so it drops it from ranking.
My question: Does this assumption sound accurate? If so, I'm assuming over time that our past ranked pages will show up once again after Google recrawls those pages and saves them in their cache.
I have several sites that were affected with this:
Thanks in advance for your input
-
Glad to hear you appear to be back on the right track
-
Update:
After unblocking Google, almost all of our rankings are back up, and in some cases a little improved. I was surprised how quickly Google recrawled and ranked the pages that dropped.
I did do a Fetch and submit on all my websites and pages. I'm not sure how Fetches are attended to by Google, but it appears they are.
I have an IT guy who doesn't feel a Fetch makes any difference. He says Google will crawl when they want to and probably does not pay attention to the Fetch request.
-
I wanted to get back to report the cause of our problem with a lot of our rankings dropping. We originally thought it was due to a database crash. And that still could be affecting some things.
We moved our servers to a new location. A couple of weeks ago, we switched over to some new IP addresses. When we did so, a program started blocking Google's IP addresses because they were hitting our servers with a lot of hits, and put those IP addresses on a blocked list. So our pages on some of the websites stopped getting crawled, and thus rankings dropped. We discovered the problem when exploring our Webmaster Tools Crawl Stats and noticed that the "kilobytes downloaded per day" had flat-lined. Doing a fetch on selected pages we could see that it was not fetching the page. So after unblocking those IP addresses, the pages got crawled, our crawl stats went back up, and our rankings started going back to where they were. We still have some rankings that have not bounced back, but assume they will as new crawls re-index those pages.
A lesson learned for me was to pay attention to the crawl stats. Any drastic variations could be a sign of a problem.
Brad
iboats.com -
I'm pretty sure that GWT is a little vague in terms of times that Googlebot visited with just the crawlrate shown on a day by day basis and there's some lag between now and when it happened. CPanel will show when spiders visited in latest visitors from memory, however I think that rather than looking back it would be better to simply ensure that this doesn't happen again with the 302 rather than the 301. Maybe refreshing of your sitemap submissions in GWT would help to get some crawling going on with a ping or two to get Googlebot back soon.
-
Also, can't we use GWT to find out the exact times or at least approximate times of when Google crawled a site? Or can we not find that information so precisely? In this case, it does seem that the 301 vs. 302 is the key problem, but also the fact that the system for getting rid of the 301 didn't work out properly.
-
It seems extreme that Google would react within an hour and 15 mins but who knows nowadays. Keep an eye on your GWT account and hopefully if you have a decent crawl rate things should remedy themselves. Stephen Salstrand made a good point. 302's rather than 301's should help. It's great to have something in place like a redirection for user experience in case of database failure, however, as Stephen said, it should be made clear to Google that it's only temporary.
-
Investigating it further, we have some permanent redirects that are still hanging. I've got my IT guys working on it as we speaking.
I've got to run, but I would like to revisit this soon. Once we have determined the problem, I will post it here.
Thanks for your opinions. They have helped.
-
Your assumptions are globally right. However, I have never seen Google react that quickly to a 301 redirect or even a crash, I always tell my customers "if you have a temporary issue with 404 and 500 erros, don't worry about it too much, Google won't react unless it is a permanent issue that lasts over three or four crawls".
This is why I would also investigate a penalty that just happened to take effect shortly after the crash. To rule that out, could you please tell us if some of your major keywords are still ranking well?
I don't think you sould worry too much about that, just wait a few days and see if some pages recover.
-
Good point on the 301's. I'll look into that.
Thanks, for your input!
-
I think your assumptions are on par. However, make sure to review that the 301 has been removed. Also, if you still want that auto redirect to happen on a crash, make it a 302 and not a 301 as a 301 will suck a lot of life out of your site (since SEs see it as permanent).
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
-
Added Schema and Rankings Went Down
Hello - We launched a schema plugin for our WordPress site to make our blog seen as articles and main page as an organization. The day after, we saw a dramatic decrease in Keyword rankings but our website health improved with Google. Any thoughts on what could be causing this?
Technical SEO | | Erin_IAN0 -
Detailed ranking question for the pros
Hi Community, We've been struggling with the search engine ranking of our SEO optimised homepage for a number of months. I'm going to provide an overview of the page stats in hope that somebody might have a suggestion as to what the problem might be or where we should be focusing our efforts. I have also provided the stats of our main competitor as I have no idea why they are ranking so high based on the stats provided: URL in question: https://mysite.com On Page Grade for our targeted keyword: A Domain authority: 36 Page authority: 45 Root Doman Links: 57 Total Links: 634 SE Ranking: #17 Competitor URL in question: https://competitorsite.com On Page Grade for same targeted keyword: A Domain authority: 32 Page authority: 43 Root Doman Links: 28 Total Links: 919 SE Ranking: #1 Another strange this about our homepage is that a second tier page on our site is actually ranking higher in the search ranking for the Targeted Keyword (#9), even though this page has not been optimised and has an On Page Grade of F. Does anybody have any suggestions of what we might be overlooking or what the issue here might be? -JF
Technical SEO | | ERpro0 -
Choosing a company name to rank for with main keyword in it?
First question is in regard to the relevance of the main keyword in the company name when used in anchor texts for linkbuilding and also on the website on page seo title tags etc.. We used to call our selves "Isle Surfboards" but now call ourselves "Isle Surf & SUP" , sup is an acronym for "stand up paddle boards" as our core biz in now paddleboards If we are trying to target the main keyword of "paddle boards" should we reconsider and call ourselves on the web " Isle Surfboards & Paddle Boards" or "Isle Surf & Paddle" or does it even matter? Then when we link build should we be building links with our new name "Isle Surf & SUP" or just as "Isle Paddle Boards" or does it even matter? Any help out there? bottom line is we want to rank better for the phrase "paddle boards" & "stand up paddle boards" as those are the top keywords. And in closing since both above are the 2 most popular keywords and are very similar "stand up paddle boards" has "paddle boards" in the phrase should all my on page related seo target "stand up paddle boards" phrase since that would have both phrases or "paddle boards" or a combo of both?
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Website not ranking for noncompetitive terms
Hi, We've took over a website last July and no matter what we do we just can't get it ranking in Google, even for noncompetitive terms. here is the website in question: http://www.alignandsmile.co.uk Ideally the client would like to rank for Canary Wharf but that location is competitive, the site doesn't even rank for 'Dentist New Providence Wharf E14' despite it being included in the title tag on the home page and in the content throughout the website. Directories with Align and Smile's business information do rank however. I opened a case with google through Webmaster tools and they 'reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google.' So I'm a bit stuck. The site ranks top for the keyphrase in Bing and Yahoo...we are really struggling with Google! Any help would be much appreciated. many thanks Marcus
Technical SEO | | dentaldesign0 -
Sudden Ranking Drop
One of my clients websites : http://www.renta-vw.co.za experienced a sudden ranking drop on 24/08/2012 for 2 of the Keyword terms : The 2 terms are : cheap car hire cape town cheap car rental cape town. The site ranked top 3 in Googel.de, Google.com, .co.uk, .nl I'm not sure if it is just a 'Google Dance' or something else at play? I checked Webmaster tools and did not see any messages from Google... This is causing a big loss of revenue for my client and after doing extensive analysis, I'm not the wiser as to what the issue is? Please assit. Thanks, Marnus
Technical SEO | | MarnusW1 -
Should i include this group of text to improve ranking
Hi i am worried about my site www.in2town.co.uk because it it a magazine site i am finding it hard to find space to put text to describe the site for the search engines. I have put text near the top of the site which is under the logo and then i have put more text under the first set of headline where i have put a twitter sign and text but it does not look that great. I rank five in google for the word lifestyle magazine and feel i could do much better and i need to rank for other words but because my site is a magazine site, i am struggling. can anyone offer me advice and let me know if the text looks rubbish please.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Dismal content rankings
Hi, I realize this is a very broad question, but I am going to ask it anyways in the hopes that someone might have some insight. I have created a great deal of unique content for the site http://www.healthchoices.ca. You can select a video category from the top dropdown, then click on a video beside the provider box to see. The articles I've written are accessible by the View Article tab under each video. I have worked hard to make the articles informative and they are all unique with quotes from expert physicians. Even for strange health conditions that don't have a lot of competition - I don't see us appearing. Our search results are quite dismal for the amount of content we have. I guess I'm checking to see if anyone is able to point me in the right direction at all? If anything jumps out... Thanks, Erin
Technical SEO | | erinhealthchoices0 -
Ranking are not correct
Hi, Just a question, On one campaign for example - Vegas Hotel (vegashotel.com.au) Google ranking for **Clubs King Cross **is ZERO on Google AU when really its result 2 on google AU There are tones of other keywords the same 😞 Please let me know why Thanks MOZ Kiddies 😄 Ray
Technical SEO | | kayweb20