Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)

[ResumeGenius]

What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia?  Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)?

Appreciate any insights

[ResumeGenius]

Hello, anybody there?

[ResumeGenius]

We're still very confused as to why we're ranking in 1st position for our money keyword in Canada, Australia and Hong Kong to name a few countries but we're ranking in 113th position in the USA.

We used to rank in 2nd position for our money keyword in the USA.

Why would this be?

[ResumeGenius]

Hello Mike and Remus, Thanks for the quick responses!

Mike, unfortunately for us, the drop did not coincide with any documented google updates. Links have also remained stable, in fact, ahrefs reported link profiles for AU and CA specific locations are weak at best.

Mike, you raise good points, however the variations found in the countries we are ranking in top positions are nowhere to be found on our site. It is the commonly universal keywords, used in all locations, that are ranking excellent abroad but horrible domestically. Also, the ranking difference I'm referring to is quite drastic, literally 1st position in CA and AU but having dropped all the way to 10th-12th pages in the U.S., with pages displaying relatively similar user metrics.

I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with keywords ranking drastically differently in other English speaking countries, and if they have identified the cause, outside of regionally popular vocabulary or user metrics?

[MikeRoberts]

Instead of immediately assuming Penguin there are things like Relevancy, localization, personalization, link authority, language tags, and so on that have affected results for some time. It could just be that the content, while in English and just as readily available to US users, has better bounce rate, better traffic, more authoritative links and so forth for Canadians and Australian search results. It could be that sites which are highly targeted toward US users have better/more relevant content that is pushing your sites down in the US but don't have the same reach in Canada & Australia. It could be that the terms you're losing traction on in the US serps are more volatile or have a different breadth of competition than in Canada or Australia.

[zoicaremus]

Hello,

It could be penguin 2.0 update on May 22. This update had more focus on local search results from what I understood. You could do some timing checks using http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change . First look in Analytics when the traffic dropped, then see if there was an algorithmic update in that proximity.

There could also be other reasons like loss of some important links.