Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Your search - site:domain.com - did not match any documents.
-
I've recently started work on a new clients website and done some preliminary work with on-page optimisation, and there is still plenty of work to be done and issues to resolve. They are ranking ok on Bing, but they are not getting any ranking on Google at all (except paid) - I tried the site:domain.com search and comes up with no results... so this confirms that something is going on with the google search rank!
Can anyone shed light on what can cause this or why this would happen?
My next step is to look at their webmaster tools (haven't had access yet), but if anyone has any tips to resolve this or where to look, that would be great!
Thanks!
-
Thanks again for your help! I will give those ideas a go.
I hope to get to the bottom of it, if for nothing else than to learn more!
Cheers.
-
Hey,
It depends on the penalty, if any.
If you have no manual actions under the Webmaster Tools, that's a hint. However, it could be an algorithmic penalty.
If the penalty, again, if any, applies to the whole site, then changing the site's contents while making sure your entire site (backlinks too) is in compliance with Google's quality guidelines, then the penalty should be revoked.
If the issue is actually only the fact that Google can't access the site, then check why, fix that ASAP and you should be ranking again in no time (check using the fetch as Googlebot to make sure that is/isn't it first).
To sum up, you should run an extensive analysis on links, content, server responses errors and find the cause of the "penalty", then work on fixing it to start ranking. Once you do, you can continue with the other SEO/design tasks.
As I said before, opening a thread in Google's Webmaster Help forums could be of much help.
All the best!
-
Thanks again for all your helpful suggestions. Here's an update on this...
Access to GWT and analytics and some more Moz tracking have revealed some server connectivity and crawl errors on the site. So I'm thinking the bots are having trouble accessing the site and hence are penalising... Bing is sill ok strangely!
At this stage there is a hold on resolving this as we are also in the process of developing a new site for this client - so we plan to now just focus on getting this site live and hopefully all the crawl errors etc will be flushed out.
One last question - is a google penalty linked to a domain or the site/files? So if we launch a new site on the same domain, but new server (host), and new files, do you think this will clear any penalties?
Thanks again.
-
If all the pages are not indexed, then yes I would assume a penalty. One of the more common reseaons a site gets penalized is due to improper linking, either inbound or outbound in nature.
If you do not yet have access to webmaster tools, there are still steps you can take. This is something you are going to have to do anyway, once you figure out what the penalty was for.
First place to start: links.
There are a wide variety of backlink tools out there. Here are a few you can try:
http://raventools.com/marketing-tools/link-manager/
http://moz.com/researchtools/ose
https://ahrefs.com/Start looking for the spammy or paid links. How can you tell? Simple. If a link has a domain like rankmehighingoogle.com or something like that, chances are it's a bad or paid backlink. The example given is a silly domain name, but you will see some like that come up. If you are unsure of a links quality, manually visit the sites to see what they are all about. If the home page has a 0 or a ? for pagerank, chances are the linking site got hit with a penalty and you should disavow that linking domain.
Another way to test is to search for the linking domain in Google. If you search for a web directory site or linking domain specifially by their name and they are nowhere to be found, Google most likely hammered them for some practice they were using.
Since you dont have access to GWT yet, this would be a good way to see what is going on with this site. You stated that you just started doing the optimization for the client, so you most likely havent had time to research the domains history yet. Once you have access to GWT you will be taking a look at links anyway, so while you are waiting for access be proactive
-
Thank you Devanur. I will look into this.
-
Hi,
I 100% agree with FedeEinhorn.
roofrackworld.com.au seems penalized somewhere around November 2013 to December 2013.
Go here: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/
Give an offline access to the tool for your Google Analytics account. Select the date range from September 2013 till date. Look for any Google update related penalty.
Please post your observations here so that we can take it from there.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Glad someone else thinks it is weird!
Thank you for your help and suggestions... I will get access to webmaster tools and see what I can find.
-
Holy... this IS weird.
Checked the robots.txt and there's nothing blocking the indexing, robots meta tags are present with INDEX.
You clearly need urgent access to Webmaster tools, seems like a penalty for pure spam or something like that, as there's no 1 single page indexed, while there are other sites linking to it.
What I would do? Before doing any further onsite SEO, get that resolved. Go to Webmaster tools and check any manual action, message, etc. Try the fetch as googlebot. Then go to Google's Webmaster forums and ask, usually someone from Google jumps in.
-
I was looking for more general advice on this issue initially, to see if others had encountered this problem. But happy to share domain if it helps... with the disclaimer as I mentioned above, that there is clearly much more work to be done to get a good rank - but this issues seems to be bigger than on-site optimisation...
Thanks
-
Care sharing the real domain?
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
-
75% Overnight Drop in Organic Search Traffic
On April 10th my organic search clicks dropped 75% overnight. I have never seen anything like it. What Google algorithm change could have caused this? I have no manual actions and my indexed page count is about the same. I have noticed that several queries that I was number one for including my brand have dropped by anywhere from two to ten spots. The brand dropping out of the first spot is what really gets me. There is nothing similar to it at all. My speed score is moderate, so I don't think that is it. My site was down most of the day on the 9th or 10th, but that has never caused a drop in search clicks and the next day they were about the same. I noticed that the CDC now occupies the number one spot for my brand. Even though the exact brand name is nowhere in the text of the CDC page. I think this might be due to Google trying to help official health organizations do better due to COVID19, but the queries I have dropped on have nothing to do with Coronavirus. Also, none of my other sites have seen this type of problem. Only the health site seems affected. I recently did a press release campaign and my link counts are up, so I don't that is it either. The brand page is https://stdcarriers.com and an example of an effected query is Celebrities with STDs.
Algorithm Updates | Apr 3, 2021, 7:45 AM | STDCarriers0 -
Why is old site not being deindexed post-migration?
We recently migrated to a new domain (16 days ago), and the new domain is being indexed at a normal rate (2-3k pages per day). The issue is the old domain has not seen any drop in indexed pages. I was expecting a drop in # of indexed pages inversely related to the increase of indexed pages on the new site. Any advice?
Algorithm Updates | Mar 24, 2016, 5:26 PM | ggpaul5620 -
Directories and Domain Authority
I read all the time about how directories have very little weight in SEO anymore, but in my field, a lot of our competitors are propped up by paying for "profiles" aka links from places like martindale-hubbard, superlawyers, findlaw, nolo, Avvo, etc (which are essentially directories IMO) yet all those sites have very high DAs of 80 and above. So, are links from these sites worth it? I know that's a vague questions, but if Moz's algo seems to rank them so highly, I'm guessing that's reasonably close to what google thinks as well...maybe? Thanks for any insight, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | Dec 17, 2015, 7:43 PM | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How seasonal would you expect organic on a b2b site to be?
I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market. Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers. Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives. I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July? Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that! Thanks... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | Jun 24, 2015, 4:41 PM | 945010 -
Where can I find a breakdown of google search volume by specific industry/vertical? For example, what % of people searching in google are looking for housing? Cars? Restaurants?
I"m looking for specific breakdowns of search volume in google by: #1 Vertical (Shopping/restaurants/Services etc). For example, how many people are searching in google for information pertaining to restaurants per month? Search volume for all of 2012, 2013, 2014? #2 More granular categories within verticals, people searching for: books,apartment rentals,cellphones) Is there a breakdown of google search somewhere online that gives this type of information? Thank you MOZ community, really appreciate it!
Algorithm Updates | Jan 15, 2015, 12:38 PM | AppleSauceRules0 -
Google sets brand/domain name at the end of SERP titles
Hi all, I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed 🙂 Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have? -Rasmus
Algorithm Updates | Mar 20, 2014, 7:34 PM | rasmusbang0 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | May 8, 2013, 9:22 AM | thealika0 -
How do I get the expanded results in a Google search?
I notice for certain site (ex: mint.com) that when I search, the top result has a very detailed view with options to click to different subsections of the site. However for my site, even though we're consistently the top result for our branded terms, the result is still only a single line item. How do I adjust this?
Algorithm Updates | Nov 9, 2011, 11:09 PM | syount1
