What happened with Hayneedle's rankings?
-
Hayneedle is an e-commerce company that operates 200 niche sites selling indoor and outdoor home products. They were ranking at the top of the first page for most terms related to their sites (fire pits, fountains, benches, etc.), but all of a sudden at the end of April they lost their rankings, getting dropped to page 4 or lower for tons of their sites (barstools.com, patiofurnitureusa.com, adirondackchairs.com, benches.com, etc.).
Does anybody know what caused this? Other than one thread on an SEO forum, we haven't been able to find any discussion about it online. It seems like cross-linking between the sites could have been a problem here, but we'd love to hear thoughts from the experts here on this. Our company is using the same business model of one brand with niche sites and we want to avoid anything like this happening to us.
-
Seeing Hayneedle sites back in the SERPs today. Looks like they removed the heavy crosslinking.
Strange that they seem to be at full previous rankings. Maybe this is old data?
I would have expected them to have lost some power without cross linking or something else devalued.
-
Very possible, I've never even seen one of their sites before so am completely unfamiliar with them.
Fell into the same trap I've seen others fall into before and attribute everything to a known change if it occurs around the same time and not think whether it could have been something different.
Glad you're keeping me honest
This is interesting though - http://www.jobmagic.com/job/Internet-Marketing-Internship-SEO-Job-Omaha-NE-68114-US-6904531.html -
-
Hayneedle's drop didn't occur on one of the dates of a Panda update. Unrelated to Panda is my bet.
-
Doh, apologies, I didn't read the question right.
Never the less, looks like it could be Panda.
Hard to pinpoint exactly what Google doesn't like about it. Their main site does look a massive link farm with that many domains and links on it.
I think they've just been caught in the cross-fire rather than having done anything wrong, but as the main sign of a link farm is the interlinking of sites I would guess that, though can't be sure (doesn't seem to be anything dodgy in their code, not looked into their link profile and there's not too much else they could really do to be more authoratative with content).
If you have a similar site then I'm not sure what I would do to demonstrate that it was simply a directory of your other sites.
Sorry I couldn't be more help.
-
Nothing has happened to our sites - we're not Hayneedle. Our sites are fine (currently). We're trying to figure out what happened to Hayneedle so we can avoid the same thing happening to us.
-
All I can say is that the seem to have been smacked by google. The sites that compete in my SERPs dropped from #1 or #2 rankings down to fourth or fifth page.
They had lots of heavy cross linking on their site. For years I have felt that it was for SERP manipulation rather than cross-selling because lots of the cross-linked sites were irrelevant.
But, I honestly don't know what happened... they lost rankings on all of their estores so Google must have caught them in some type of sin and demoted all of their sites.
-
Sounds like Panda got you - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html - It's designed to get rid of content farm style sites and thin affiliates.
It seemed to get a 3rd update towards the end of last week (or a little before) which may be what caught you.
Good news is Google tells you what they want you to do about it - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
Bad news is there are very few success stories and you're at the mercy of Google as to when they'll run the check again (the update is not part of the main algorithm but a supplemental one run intermittently).
The fact it's hit all of your sites suggests that you're not recognised as high quality sites or appeared to be a farm. Did all your sites link to each other in some way?
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
-
Too many links pointing to our privacy policy page: Hurting our ranking efforts of main pages?
Hi community, As per the "Links" report from GSC, there are millions of pages pointing to our privacy policy page. We can expect high number of links to this page being ours an open source product. But these links are overtaking the count of links pointing to our homepage which are very artificial from few spammy or low quality sites. "Privacy policy" anchor text is also been the top anchor text. Our homepage ranking dropped and I suspect this is the culprit. Google might be considering this is the important page being linked on top with anchor text. Shall I Disavow these sites and will this makes Google stop counting links, and the anchor text coming from these sites as well? Suggestions please. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Spammy Website Framed My Site & Stole Rankings
Hi One of the pages of my website was starting to gather some real traction in Google rankings and hit 3500 visitors per day. This is the page: http://www.naturallivingideas.com/drinking-apple-cider-vinegar-benefits/ On 11th January search traffic to this page fell to virtually 0. The rest of the site rankings were unaffected. Yesterday I tried searching for some of the main keywords I was ranking for and instead of my search listing, this was appearing: Image: http://www.naturallivingideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/weird-rankings.jpg It is in the exact position I was ranking in, but instead this evn . moe site has stolen my ranking. Upon opening the website, it is simply my original article page in an iframe. If you look at the source code of the offending website, you will see what I mean. Hopefully now you are getting a 403 forbidden error as my host blocked referrals from that site but they still hold my rankings. Has anyone ever seen this before? How was this done? And how can I get my ranking back? Thanks in advance, James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JamesPenn0 -
Duplicate categories how to make sure I don't get penalized for this
Hi there How would I go about fixing duplicate categories? My products sell in multiple category areas and some overlap the other - how can I go about making sure that I don't get penalised for this? Each category and content is unique but my advisors offer different tools and insights.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?
Hi Mozzers, I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed. They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking. Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)? Thanks, Cole
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Are the Majority of SEO Companies 'Spammers, Evildoers, & Opportunists'?
This may not be the most productive Q&A discussion, but I've had some really interesting experiences this last month that have made me even more distrusting of "SEO" companies. I can't help but think of this post (not much has changed since '09). Even though it takes a pretty extreme stance, I agree with the core of it - _"The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web." _ I didn't start doing this type of work wanting to have such a negative opinion of SEO companies, but I just keep having the same experience: I'll get referred to someone who isnt' happy with their SEO company. They send me their web address, I check out the site, and seriously can't believe what I find. MISSING PAGE TITLES, EVERY CANONICAL URL ISSUE IMAGINABLE, AND 10'S OF THOUSANDS OF BOT SPAM EMAT LINKS FROM PAGES LIKE THIS...AND THIS and just recently a company a called one of my clients and conned him into paying for this piece of spam garbage, obviously scraped from the site that I made for him. and what's worse, sometimes for whatever reason these companies will have all the client's FTP and CMS logins and it can be hell trying to get them to hand them over. There's no webmaster tools set up, no analytics, nothing.... These businesses are paying a good chunk of change every month, I just can't believe stuff like this is so common...well acutally, it's what i've come to expect this point. But I used to think most SEO companies actually had their clients best interest at heart. Does every honest consultant out there run into this same type of stuff constantly? How common is this type of stuff really? Now, on to the positive. This community rocks, and I feel like it represents real, ethical, solution-oriented, boundary-less SEO. So thank you Mozzers for all you do. and I love using the tools here to help businesses understand why they need an honest person helping them. If anyone has thoughts on the topic, I'd love to hear 'em...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SVmedia3 -
Any Benefit to Artificially Boosting the CTR for rank?
I've read articles that indicates Google will provide a higher rank to listing with higher click through rates (i.e, http://bit.ly/132mUd0, "If a search result achieves a higher than average click through rate then it may be given a higher ranking.") First, this seems like a chicken-and-egg scenario: it seems like results with higher rank will have higher CTR from increased exposure, no? Second, if this was an accurate ranking signal, it seems like it would be so easy to black hat (as well as other web usage signals, such as goal conversions and time on site). I'd just pay some Indian dude to search for my website on different IPs and click through in the SERP. Your thoughts about this scenario?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Does Google Penalize for Managing multiple Google Places from the same IP Address? Can you manage from same google account or separate? Or does it matter since it's created from the same IP?
I manage a number of client's Google Places from the same IP and heard this is not a good thing. Are there Do's and Don'ts when managing multiple Google Places? Create separate google accounts for each or can you use the same account?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Souk0 -
Sudden Ranking Drop from 1st Page
My client's Website http://countryfeelingholidays.com is experiencing a huge drop of its rankings since Aug 1st. It was at 2nd on 1st page on google.lk for the keyword Holidays Sri Lanka . But When I checked it last it has gone to 20th page. I really cannot find a reason for this drop . Only thing that comes to mind is that we put a comment on a blog but finally it appeared on all pages because of top commentator plugin . huge rise in backlinks in oneday . from next day we lost its ranking on google.lk but on google.com it is still at the same position where it used to be . What would be the reason for this ? Could it be a penelty ? What should we do now to get its ranking back ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Osanda0