Vanish from google after choosing preferred domain and fixing 40 duplicate meta descriptions?
-
I recently followed 2 Google webmaster suggestions to clean up the on page SEO for our site. I chose a preferred domain 2 weeks ago(to www.website.com) and fixed the duplicate meta descriptions that our CMS was setting to unique and more natural descriptions for each page. I did that 3 days ago. Webmaster tools still says they are duplicates because it hasn't crawled the whole site yet.
We have been fortunate enough to have some of our blog posts be covered by yahoo.com, cnet.com, huffingtonpost.com, gizmodo.com, etc. That is some major backlink juice and, as recently as 2 weeks ago, our website would be the #1 result when searching Google for "ourwebsite.com exact title of very popular blog post". Now it is on the 3rd page, and the top results are the websites that linked to our blog post.
So....what gives? Is there a specific area I should look at? Our should I wait for Google to fully index our whole site now that changes have been made?
It should be noted that our rankings have stayed the same in yahoo and bing.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
-
This could change in traffic be soooo many things without knowing your site's entire background.
There could be a Panda/Penguin penalty in play (I have no way of knowing) so read up on those and make sure you're not a victim of duplicate/thin content and/or shady link building practices (even if they occurred in the past, use OSE to take a look).
I'm not seeing the redirect from non www to www as an issue in terms of ranking but double check that you implemented that correctly. I haven't heard of losing rankings over this tweak before but I suppose it's possible that it takes Google a some time to figure that out (though I dont see why it would hurt rankings in the interim).
Other sites outranking you for your own article is actually quite common if you're not on a strong domain otherwise. 3rd page sounds rather harsh though. Are you engaging in any questionable link building practices?
Without knowing more it's really tough to say what your site's problem might be. I think I can rule out the 301 redirect from www to non-www if implimented correctly. Sean is correct in checking your robots.txt file as well.
Hope I answered your question if not solving your greater problem for you!
-
We've had sites drop out off the top 50 as google reevaluated such small changes as you listed in your post. I'd say give it some time and after a month start worrying. In the mean time look at webmaster tools and see if the search impressions have changed/dropped.
-
If you're using WordPress, make sure you don't have the site blocked in "General". If not, check your robots.txt file. Does the site come up when you hit the URL? If so, make sure you Google ".htaccess force www" and put a rule in your .htaccess file that 301 redirects non-www pages to their www brethren. All those links were to your non-www URL so depending on your system, the non-www may be throwing a 404 which would certainly get you pushed down the SERPs.
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
-
Deceptive site warning from Google: Java script and meta descriptions deployed.
Hi all, We received a deceptive site warning from Google recently. Seems like there is a deceptive content on some pages of the website. Some pages are removed from Google index. Meta descriptions have been deployed on the site few days ago. There is also java script on the website which we use for tracking visitors like GA. I wonder what's the reason for this alert? We believe its due to the Java script. Do you think meta descriptions will harm this bad? Any ideas? Thanks
Search Behavior | | vtmoz0 -
Skewed results in Google
Im just curious.. Im sure a lot of you, like me, Google your own search terms on a fairly frequent basis. Does doing this skew the result you are actually seeing? As in, does Google tailor the results more to my liking, and therefore perhaps show my own site (which I would click through to often enough) higher on the page that it actually is? Sometimes I swear that happens. Steve.
Search Behavior | | blitzna100 -
I changed my home title and meta description but on google, i still see the old title and meta description. Whats the problem here?
I basically changed the title and meta description of my homepage and when i search on google, it still shows old. Whats the issue?
Search Behavior | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
What is the best way to learn google analytics?
Hi I'm trying to get my head around google analytics as a first time user. Can any suggest the best place to start after I have taken a look through the whole thing, how do I go about managing and tracking performances on my website? eg: Registrations/sign ups, conversions all that sort of thing Some advice will be much appreciated Thanks
Search Behavior | | edward-may0 -
Google PageRank and google keyword ranks
Hi, I manage around 13 Clients for SEO and this last two weeks i have been having problems with google keyword ranking some of my clients went down almost 40 positions for some keywords other 15 other stayed the same and some just went down 1 or 5 positions. Somebody know what is happening with google? is it shuffling around positions of people? Any advice or how you do your SEO I'm willing to work together and share experiences and tactics on SEO to people that also share with me in order to build more strategies on this amazing market. Thanks.
Search Behavior | | computernc0 -
Google De-Indexed Our SIte for Branded Terms?
Hello all, As of 10am Pacific on September 12th, 2013, my team has noticed that our site, www.wirelessemporium.com, does not show up on the first 5 or 6 pages of SERPs for branded terms like "wireless emporium." We have not received any messages from Google via Webmaster Tools regarding this. Major activity that we've been doing to our site is updating content, meta tags, and h1 tags, along with removing/301 redirecting certain pages that did not meet Google quality guidelines. We've also been purging our backlink portfolio of toxic links and URLs, both manually and through the disavow tool. No blackhat has been done to this site for a very long time (more than 8 months now). One thing to note is that we did have a manual spam penalty placed on us back in July of 2012, it expired in early August of 2013 after a reconsideration request was submitted, and a 2nd manual spam penalty was placed on us again later that month. We are submitting a 2nd reconsideration request this Monday. Could this or the recent Panda update have anything to with this? We are very much in need of opinions as to why this is happening to our site. 5adbd14a31de3a78b998df94f0b6d2be
Search Behavior | | eugeneku0 -
Our rel=author profile not show in google result
our "rel= author " profile not show in Google result since last day . Before this our profile is showing in Google serp but suddenly author profile not show for a single page .Google serp rank is ok. for that and other page are working as usual please share views..?
Search Behavior | | SameerBhatia0 -
Meta description of homepage, changing to latest post
Here's something strange I noticed. The meta description for Engadget when doing a Google search is their latest blog entry. However, if you land on the homepage and view source the page, the meta description is a standard one for their homepage. My first impressions : Wha? How? and Wha? Could it be because it is a "news" site, Google goes "go on, have custom meta descriptions of your latest entry.." Thoughts?
Search Behavior | | Bio-RadAbs0