Sudden drop in all (keyword) +widgets keywords, after years of dominating
-
Google seems to be following up on either Panda 2.xx ..or we just got hit with link devaluation. We lost rankings with most of our keywords, where we were ranked 1,2,3 ..first page for most. Now we have dropped on the first page for competitive keywords, and even some to the seconds page.
We haven't changed anything on the site itself...and those ranking over us in some areas have very little quality content, and links. Sites like "keyword.info"..or "keyword-keyword.org", etc. seem to be gaining some of the top spots.
This comes years after solidly dominating our niche, and steady traffic. My theory is the latest Google changes are affecting link value, and perhaps we simply got some authority loss...but was wondering if you could shed any light on this issue?
Thanks.
-
Panda 2.2 is a much more subtle change than Panda 1.0 or 2.0 were. . A few of us in the industry believe that Panda 2.2 was rolled out this past week. There's subtle changes for many sites, and that's what it seems to be, however it's both too early to tell, and as EGOL points out, there are many other possible causes for any single site.
-
My theory is the latest Google changes are affecting link value, and perhaps we simply got some authority loss...but was wondering if you could shed any light on this issue?
Without more detailed information, our guess would be about the same as yours.
This comes years after solidly dominating our niche
... or maybe your competitors are working harder to move up the SERPs than you are working to maintain them.
Sites like "keyword.info"..or "keyword-keyword.org", etc. seem to be gaining some of the top spots.
Keywords in the domain can help a little, but are usually only of real value when your domain is an exact match for the query. Most of my sites are KW.com and I believe that the ranking value of the KW in the domain has declined recently.
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
-
Why is Page Authority dropping?
Hi I'm trying to review pages which have previously ranked, but in March have dropped out completely. Some of these pages I can see have dropped to having a Page Authority of 1, we haven't changed anything on these pages, so is there a reason why the authority has dropped? These pages only had around 8 - 10 Page Authority to begin with. I'm trying to identify why we have lost keywords, and if it has anything to do with the Google Updates in March Here are examples of the pages with drops: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/heavy-duty-shelving-1830x1830mm-blue-orange
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/metal-feet-for-heavy-duty-steel-shelving
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/health-and-safety-law-poster-a2 Thank you!0 -
Sudden Drop in Organic Traffic through Image Search
We've have been facing a strange issue with our Organic Image Search Traffic since July month, 10th July 2016 to be precise. There is a significant decline in our Organic Image Search Traffic that we can see in our Google Search Console Account, We have noticed a sudden drop (Almost 80%-90%) in our daily clicks through image search in Google Search Console, Does anyone here have any idea why this has happened suddenly though everything is same as it was before and we haven't done any changes in image names and images path. IWPbQ
Algorithm Updates | | tigersohelll0 -
How is this possible? #2 ranking with NO on-page keywords, no backlinks, no sitemap...
Hi everybody. I have a question ... I'm totally stumped. This question is being asked today (November 16th, 2015) just after Google updated something in their algorithm. Nobody seems to know what they did. and it has something to do with the new "Rank Brain" system they're now using. My niche is Logo Design Software (https://www.thelogocreator.com). I had the keywords "logo creator" on the page roughly 7 times. After Google updated, I lost about 10 spots and as of this writing, I've dropped to #15. So, maybe I over optimized. fine. Noticing that for the keyword "logo creator" ... NONE of the top 14 spots actually have "logo creator" in their page title and NONE of them have more that 2 instances (if any) of the keyword "logo creator" on the actual page. So I removed ALL instances of my keyword "logo creator" from my home page - used the Webmaster's Fetch Tool and moved up a few spots instantly. So what the heck? And the #2 spot for that keyword is www.logomakr.com - they have NO words at all on their pages, no blog, no sitemap and far fewer links than anybody in the top 10. Can anybody reading this shed some light? Marc Marc Sylvester
Algorithm Updates | | Laughingbird
Laughingbird Software0 -
Traffic drop only affecting google country domains
Hello, I have noticed that our our traffic is down by 15% (last 30 days to the 30 days before it) and I dug deeper to figure out whats going on and I am not sure I understand what is happening. Traffic from google country domains( for example google.com.sa) dropped by 90% on the 18th of September, same applies to other country specific domains. Now my other stats (visits organic keywords, search queries in WMT) seem to be normal and have seem some decrease (~5%) but nothing as drastic as the traffic drop from the google country domains. Is this an https thing that is masking the source of the traffic that came into effect on that date? Is the traffic that is now missing from google country domains being reported from other sources? Can anyone shed some light on what is going on? qk0CS7X
Algorithm Updates | | omarfk0 -
Recent Rank drop after Penguin 2.1?
Recently, a lot of pages from our website have moved from page one or ranking number one, to page ten or something. We got a manual penalty message from Google Team, we removed a lot of unnatural links pointing to our pages and disavowed the rest. This got the penalty removed and we got a message from Google confirming the same. Before the manual penalty we were getting about 140,000 visits per day, after the penalty about 80,000. However, after Hummingbird or Penguin 2.1 all our ranks have vanished. We are nowhere in Google for our primary keywords and we getting like 40,000 visits per day. Most are direct or from sources other than Google. We had another look at the links we disavowed, a list of about 11000 domains, we found about 3000 domains to be good. We fixed the disavow file about one week back, but no changes in traffic since. We checking the domains again to see if we have missed more good domains in there; yes, we have. There are still a very few good domains in there. But we are not touching the disavow list; waiting to see the change for the last submitted. We have a dedicated user base, good liking on Facebook, all the stats in Analytics speak good, about 40% repeat visits about 30% direct. About 3000 people search for the site using our brand name as reported in Analytics. I doubt the on-page optimization, the pages could be over-optimized. But the on-page factors for other pages ranking for the keywords are similar. The keyword density is similar, so are the usage of headings and stuff. We have not made any recent changes to these on-page patterns. Our team is not able to figure out what could have gone wrong.
Algorithm Updates | | Develop410 -
Google webmaster tool content keywords Top URLs
GWT->Optimization->Content Keywords section... If we click on the keyword it will further shows the variants and Top URLs containing those variants. My problem is none of the important pages like product details pages, homepage or category pages are present in that Top URLs list. All the news, guides section url's are listed in the Top URLs section for most important keyword that is also present in my domain name. How to make google realize the important pages for the important keyword?
Algorithm Updates | | BipSum0 -
Staff Dumbfounded by Rankings Drop - Please Help Us Understand!
We are completely dumbfounded by the amount of organic traffic we lost virtually instantly back on Aug 22 2012. We are spending much more money advertising as of late but took another massive plunge since rolling out our newer site redesign this past sat 04/13/13. The newer and more updated version of our site seems to all of a sudden have us dropping like a rock again! Our developers and in house SEO guy that is in house here seems to think our content is ok and that our PR and page authority is ok as well. However they have told me it isn't good per-say, but not the reason in their opinion for our sites drop in rankings instantly. We've seen tons of keywords drop 22-40+ positions in google. We've been online since 2001 and I've never seen anything even remotely close to this. Didn't seem to see such an impact with bing or yahoo though. Due to our rankings being slaughtered we decided to hired WebIMAX to come in and figure out what happened. They informed us that we must have been hit with the panda filter they collectively guessed. Said our content was fair lol. They done allot of tests without anything really indicated the real root cause of the problem and most every major change they requested we made. However we've changed the site design and layout now and changed much of the content and overall structure to be better we believe and we for the life of us cannot understand the massive unexplained penalty. I attached an image which illustrates our dramatic drop in traffic. Bare in mind that as traffic drops we spend more $$$ advertising so mere traffic numbers don't even really say it all. Our organic results are really down maybe 60-70%. We really thought WebIMAX would be a big help and give great assistance and insight. I didn't see any of that and I think our IT staff agrees. We paid big bucks for nothing in return it seems. However we are desperate and are actually considering staying with them even though they've produced zero results or maybe negative results. In fact with all that was done over weeks and weeks with WebIMAX we continued to DROP in organic results. We don't know if we should go back to them, choose another SEO company or just go on trying to fix this issue ourselves. Website is http://www.cruizinconceptswholesale.com/ We just want someone that knows what they are looking at to say hey I see something Major Right Here. If we could get that then we would simply fix it. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help us out with their expert knowledge and I think I would trust the community here more than WebIMAX easily! David. cruizin-traffic-image.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | David_C0 -
Traffic drop :(
Hello MOzzers, hope you are all well. Here is my question. Site : http://www.gunshotdigital.com Issue: Traffic In the past 3 days we have close to 300 Unique visitors, but today we just have 5. Totally confused as to why this might be. I know Matt Cutts hinted at algo change in 2 months. Our rankings are still steady. So could anyone help? 🙂 Thank you Mozzers, we love you and are flattered to be part of this formidable community. Vijay
Algorithm Updates | | vijayvasu0