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
-
What's the best way to handle product filter URLs?
I've been researching and can't find a clear cut answer. Imagine you have a product category page e.g. domain/jeans You've a lot of options as to how to filter the results domain/jeans?=ladies,skinny,pink,10 or domain/jeans/ladies-skinny-pink-10 or domain/jeans/ladies/skinny?=pink,10 And in this how do you handle titles, breadcrumbs etc. Is the a way you prefer to handle filters and why do you do it that way? I'm trying to make my mind up as some very big names handle this differently e.g. http://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-jeans/colour-pink-fit-skinny-size-10r VS https://www.matalan.co.uk/womens/shop-by-category/jeans?utf8=✓&[facet_filter][meta.tertiary_category][Skinny]=on&[facet_filter][variants.meta.size][Size+10]=on&[facet_filter][meta.master_colour][Midwash]=on&[facet_filter][min_current_price][gte]=6.0&[facet_filter][min_current_price][lte]=18.0&per=36&sort=
Technical SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
How google bot see's two the same rel canonicals?
Hi, I have a website where all the original URL's have a rel canonical back to themselves. This is kinda like a fail safe mode. It is because if a parameter occurs, then the URL with the parameter will have a canonical back to the original URL. For example this url: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ has this canonical: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ which is the same since it's an original URL This url https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter has this canonical https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ like i said before, parameters have a rel canonical back to their original url's. SO: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter and this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ both have the same canonical which is this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ Im telling you all that because when roger bot tried to crawl my website, it gave back duplicates. This happened because it was reading the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the original url (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) and the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the url with the parameter (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter) and saw that both were point to the same canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/)... So, i would like to know if google bot treats canonicals the same way. Because if it does then im full of duplicates 😄 thanks.
Technical SEO | | dos06590 -
Godaddy and Soft 404's
Hello, We've found that a website we manage has a list of not-found URLS in Google webmaster tools which are "soft 404's " according to Google. I went to the hosting company GoDaddy to explain and to see what they could do. As far as I can see GoDaddy's server are responding with a 200 HTTP error code - meaning that the page exists and was served properly. They have sort of disowned this as their problem. Their server is not serving up a true 404 response. This is a WordPress site. 1) Has anyone seen this problem before with GoDaddy?Is it a GoDaddy problem?2) Do you know a way to sort this issue? When I use the command site:mydomain.co.uk the number of URLs indexed is about right except for 2 or 3 "soft URLs" . So I wonder why webmaster tools report so many yet I can't see them all in the index?
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Wrong Title In SERP
Hi, When i search for specific keyword that i rank in Google, my title page is completely different from what i see on actual page, but when i search for my other keyword that i rank too, i can see exact same title that i have on my page for the same URL, I'm using Thesis theme to manage my meta tags, How can i change that Title, my CTR dropped dramatically for the past week since it happened Thanks
Technical SEO | | KentR0 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
What's the best format for a e-commerce URL product page
We have over 2000 non branded experiences and activities sold through our website. The website is having a face lift with the a new look and a stronger focus on SEO. As part of this, I am keen to establish what the best practice is for product based URLs. I've researched the market and come up with a few alternatives that are used: domain/category/subcategory/activity_name domain/activity_name/category/subcategory/activity_reference domain/generic_term/activity_reference/activity_name domain/category/activity_location/activity_name Activities are location based but the location can change (say once every 2 years). Activity names, category, subcategory and activity_reference rarely change. Are there any thoughts/ research on the best method? (If there is one) Many thanks in advance for your insights.
Technical SEO | | philwill0 -
Pictures 'being stolen'
Helping my wife with ecommerce site. Selling clothes. Some photos are given by producer, but at times they are not too good. Some are therefore taking their own photos and i suspect ppl are copying them and using them on their own site. Is there anyting to do about this - watermarking of course, but can they be 'marked' in anyway linking to your site ?
Technical SEO | | danlae0