Lost page rank, am I in the sandbox?
-
Hi,
Our page rank was 5 for the last 3 months. Before it was 4 for a long time. Today our page rank dropped to 0 and I have no idea why.. We didn't buy any links or did anything wrong..
I also checked every keyword rankings we are on but we didn't loose our spot in any keyword..
Is it a short term thing, or am I in the sandbox? How can I fix this problem or avoid from a worse situation..?
- We just changed the site template few times in last two months..
Thanks
-
Thanks a lot. It is a relief.
-
Nice Article. Thanks for the advice.
-
Onur
That's good to hear. My only concern is the perception that your "google rank" was affected somehow.
It's not your google rank. It's a publicly shared generalized numeric value Google puts out for curious onlookers. It's not based in reality.
-
Alan,
thanks for the info. We didn't loose any traffic. Everything looks fine except our google rank.
-
If you were in the sandbox you would have no doubt about it, hehe
The truth is, when you get sandboxed you can expect a drop around 90% (if not 100%) of your visits from organic Google, thats the stat you look to check if it has happened or not
-
My tool shows you with a PR=3 ... Not quite a 5 but much better than zero. I don't think you are in the sandbox. Just growing pains.
-
Changing your site template should not have effected your page rank. Matt Cutts from Google explains that page rank is a formula based on backlinks and the quality of them.
I wouldn't stress too much about your PR. What matters the most is how well you are ranking. If you haven't dropped in your keyword rankings, then you have not been sandboxed. Just continue to focus on building quality backlinks. Build your PR back up.
-
The "page rank" you refer to - is this the ToolBar PageRank? If so, relax, take a step back and consider this:
1. TBPR is an inaccurate indicator.
2. TBPR is not updated for months at a time, and thus does not reflect timely reality.
3. TBPR is irrelevant to professional SEO
4. You say you didn't lose any rankings
5. The real and only question that matters is this:
Did you see a dramatic drop in visits coming from organic search queries?
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
-
How do I prevent duplicate page title errors from being generated by my multiple shop pages?
Our e-commerce shop has numerous pages within the main shop page. Users navigate through the shop via typical pagination. So while there may be 6 pages of products it's all still under the main shop page. Moz keeps flagging my shop pages as having duplicate titles (ie shop page 2). But they're all the same page. Users aren't loading unique pages each time they go to the next page of products and they aren't pages I can edit. I'm not sure how to prevent this issue from popping up on my reports.
Technical SEO | | NiteSkirm0 -
What should I do about not found pages?
I took over a site that had been hacked. A bunch of pages were created that said domain.com/cms/viagra. The pages are gone but they still show in webmaster tools as not being found, which is what I want. However, should I do anything besides leaving them as 404?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Banned Page
I have been using a 3rd party checker on indexed pages in google. It has shown several banned pages. I type the page in and it comes up. But it is nowhere to be found for me to delete it. It is not in the wordpress pages. It also shows up in the duplicate content section in my campaigns in moz.com. I can find the page to delete it. If it is banned then I do not want to redirect it to the correct page. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Technical SEO | | Roots70 -
How do I fix issue regarding near duplicate pages on website associated to city OR local pages?
I am working on one e-commerce website where we have added 300+ pages to target different local cities in USA. We have added quite different paragraphs on 100+ pages to remove internal duplicate issue and save our website from Panda penalty. You can visit following page to know more about it. And, We have added unique paragraphs on few pages. But, I have big concerns with other elements which are available on page like Banner Gallery, Front Banner, Tool and few other attributes which are commonly available on each pages exclude 4 to 5 sentence paragraph. I have compiled one XML sitemap with all local pages and submitted to Google webmaster tools since 1st June 2013. But, I can see only 1 indexed page by Google on Google webmaster tools. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local/US/Alabama/Vinyl-Banners http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local/MO/Kansas-City/Vinyl-Banners and so on... Can anyone suggest me best solution for it?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
How to identify orphan pages?
I've read that you can use Screaming Frog to identify orphan pages on your site, but I can't figure out how to do it. Can anyone help? I know that Xenu Link Sleuth works but I'm on a Mac so that's not an option for me. Or are there other ways to identify orphan pages?
Technical SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Google doesn't rank the best page of our content for keywords. How to fix that?
Hello, We have a strange issue, which I think is due to legacy. Generally, we are a job board for students in France: http://jobetudiant.net (jobetudiant == studentjob in french) We rank quite well (2nd or 3rd) on "Job etudiant <city>", with the right page (the one that lists all job offers in that city). So this is great.</city> Now, for some reason, Google systematically puts another of our pages in front of that: the page that lists the jobs offers in the 'region' of that city. For example, check this page. the first link is a competitor, the 3rd is the "right" link (the job offers in annecy), but the 2nd link is the list of jobs in Haute Savoie (which is the 'departement'- equiv. to county) in which Annecy is... that's annoying. Is there a way to indicate Google that the 3rd page makes more sense for this search? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jgenesto0 -
Descriptions missing from rankings associated with Google Place pages.
Can anyone help me figure out why my rankings that are associated with Google Place pages are missing descriptions? I have a number one result for the top searched keyword in my category but it just doesn't look the same without a description and I'm sure it's affecting CTR too.
Technical SEO | | glideagency0 -
Too Many On Page LInk
The analysis of my site is showing that I have a problem with too many on-page links. Most of this is due to our menu, and wanting users to be able to quickly get to the shopping category they are looking for. We end up with over 200 links in order to get the menu we want. How are other people dealing with a robust menu, but avoiding getting dinged for too many links? One of our pages in question is: http://www.milosport.com/category/2176-snowboards.aspx
Technical SEO | | dantheriver0