On March 10 a client's newsroom disappeared out of the SERPS. Any idea why?
-
For years the newsroom, which is on the subdomain news.davidlerner.com - has ranked #2 for their brand name search. On march 10 it fell out of the SERPs - it is completely gone. What happened? How can I fix this?
-
Hi Sally,
This could have to do with Google's desire to present the most diverse selection of results for terms, and since there are a range of other websites relevant for the [david lerner] query, Google has dropped the subdomain in favour of keeping the main site in first position, and showing a potentially relevant result for a totally different business in second position (the leggings result). This can happen even when a result has ranked well for years.
To solve this, it would be good if the site displayed "sitelinks" for the brand query (i.e. the six or more links that appear below a branded search, usually linking to other key pages within the website). Obtaining these links usually requires strength and authority that far outweighs other companies with similar names. It's not very common to see subdomains appearing as sitelinks, but it does happen sometimes, when a brand and the subdomain are particularly strong, e.g. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ycombinator&oq=ycombinator&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0l5.1467j0j9&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8 (look at the Hacker News and Y Combinator Posthaven links).
You have a partial duplication issue with both http://news.davidlerner.com/ and http://news.davidlerner.com/news_index.php displaying the snippets for largely the same stories, but this should not be enough to damage the subdomain from a Panda point of view. You may consider restricting bots' access to the /news_index.php page unless it is performing a different task from an SEO perspective for you. Again, I do not believe this has caused the site to drop out of the rankings (and it is still perfectly indexed, ranking for its URL and full name) but it's something to consider tidying up.
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
-
Website(s) Merge Questions
Hello Moz Community I have three separate websites that I have planned on merging into one. I recently acquired a strong domain ( stronger than my existing ones ) & after much deliberation, I have decided to move them together into one domain. Site 1) 1 Forum - Around since 2007 - Originally VBulletin, last year migrated to discourse. Site 2) E-commercece Magento Site - Around since 2010 Site 3) WordPress - Blog & Articles - Around since last year - Currently using the new ( Main Domain I want to use ) After a lot of research and White Board Fridays, I was thinking this would be my best bet: newdomain.com - Merged WordPress & Magento CMS Page. newdomain.com/ forum <-- Will move my forum content & Install to the new domain. newdomain.com/ store <-- Will move my Ecommerce content & Install. Between my developer and I, we have our heads around how to handle the technical aspect of the move, 301s to the new location etc. But one area we want to research before pulling the trigger ( we haven't found much data on this ) **My Main Question:**What is the possible penalty coming for shopping websites vs. content-driven websites, and possibility that forum-based content hosted on the same domain might cause another penalty to be applied to the other content on the domain. **My Developer Says:**In recent years, we noticed that forum content had been penalized in favor of editorially reviewed content when this is identified by search engines.
Technical SEO | | Shop-Sq
What big hiccups would / could we encounter from combining these 3 types of platforms into one site?Many thanks for any direction or insight.0 -
Akamai's Edge Redirector good for SEO?
Hey guys, Just wondering if anyone has used/tested Akamai's new 'Edge Redirector' cloudlet?http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/edge-redirector.html It seems like it would be a better/faster option than redirects at the server level via htaccess.. thoughts? Thanks!,
Technical SEO | | wojkwasi
Woj1 -
Http to https - is a '302 object moved' redirect losing me link juice?
Hi guys, I'm looking at a new site that's completely under https - when I look at the http variant it redirects to the https site with "302 object moved" within the code. I got this by loading the http and https variants into webmaster tools as separate sites, and then doing a 'fetch as google' across both. There is some traffic coming through the http option, and as people start linking to the new site I'm worried they'll link to the http variant, and the 302 redirect to the https site losing me ranking juice from that link. Is this a correct scenario, and if so, should I prioritise moving the 302 to a 301? Cheers, Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
Weird SERPS
Hello mozerz, I have a question regarding my SERPS that I just can't figure out, maybe one of you had this problem before or has encounter a similar problem. So I have a website on Scotland, and I have a page for each major city so the structure is scotland/city/glasgow or scotland/city/edinburgh or scotland/city/aberdeen. Now every city page is w3 validated, page speed validated, has around 1000 words of text, all with h1, h2, image alt, nice title and nice description, all have grade A on moz campaign, original content, all with canonical links, no ads or spammy links. The title , description, h1, h2 and img alt are the same only replaced Aberdeen with Edinburgh or Glasgow. or so on ... so all pages are identically just replaced the city word. In terms of link building I have done none ! and in terms of promotion I have done none... so theres no scenario where by I have done something more for one city then the other Now my problem is that all cities are doing well in SERPS, only Glasgow has come up till 14 position and then has dropped suddenly to 74, and remained there for 2 weeks now. I know this sounds like a penalty, but it can't be because I haven't done anything, I've tried all the tools possible to analyze the Glasgow page, though that it was a code problem or a broken link or that google-bot doesn't get up to this page to crawl it and classify it, but all is fine. Can anyone suggest anything that I might do. I'm 100% sure that I have no penalty, I've checked even the webmaster tools, open site explorer to see if anyone tried to link to my site with spammy links ( has happened before, I had about 1000 links about viagra from a competitor pointing to my site ) .
Technical SEO | | asmedia0 -
Blocked URL's by robots.txt
In Google Webmaster Tools shows me 10,936 Blocked URL's by robots.txt and it is very strange when you go to the "Index Status" section where shows that since April 2012 robots.txt blocked many URL's. You can see more precise on the image attached (chart WMT) I can not explain why I have blocked URL's ? because I have nothing in robots.txt.
Technical SEO | | meralucian37
My robots.txt is like this: User-agent: * I thought I was penalized by Penguin in April 2012 because constantly i'am losing visitors now reaching over 40%. It may be a different penalty? Any help is welcome because i'm already so saturated. Mera robotstxt.jpg0 -
"Standout" tag and "Original content" tags - what's the latest?
In November 2010 Google introduced the "standout tag" http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283 I can't find any articles/blog posts/etc in google after that date, but its use was suggested in a google forum today to help with original content issues. Has anyone used them? Does anyone know what's the latest with them? Are they worth trying for SEO? Is there a possible SEO penalty for using them? Thanks, Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
Alternatives to SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnistics
I really like SEOmoz's Crawl diagnostics reports, it goes through the pages and finds all sorts of valuable information, I wanted to know if there are any other services that compete against this specific service, to test the accuracy of their crawl diagnistics. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestOdds0 -
Destination URL in SERPs keeps changing and I can't work out why.. Help.
I am befuddled as to why our destination URL in SERPs keeps changing oak furniture was nicely returning http://www.thefurnituremarket.co.uk/oakfurniture.asp then I changed something yesterday I did 2 things. published a link to that on facebook as part of a competition. redirected dynamic pages to the static URL for oak furniture.. Now for oak furniture the SERPs in GG UK is returning our home page as the most relevant landing page.. Any Idea why? I'm leaning to an onpage issue than posting on FB.. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | robertrRSwalters0