Recent Algorithm Update Impact on Rankings
-
I've read that the most recent algorithm update by Google is targeting dodgy links. I have a client's website who within the last few days has been smashed out of of top positions for the most competitive keywords (and many others). I'm worried that the site has been penalised, however I can't understand why it would be.
The site only has 11 domains linking to it (65 links total) and a lot of these links are coming from the same websites that link to all of our other web clients and none of them have experienced this sudden and significant drop in rankings.
Does anyone know if Google is targeting a specific type of site, or how I can determine if my client's website has been penalised? I've not made any significant changes recently to the site's content or meta data, however rankings have remained steady for months now. It just seemed to happen overnight that they dropped off everything (eg. middle of page 2 to page 8 of search results for some of the better keywords)
Thank you in advance for any assistance!
-
Hey Juice, I had the same thing happen on a very well optimized site with great backlinks.
I found that I had 2046 links from m(dot)biz linking to me that did not show in any tools but did show in GWT inbound links. These were all do-follow with the title tag as the anchor text. and about a third of them popped up right before the algo change.
I have disavowed them, and waiting to see if I get the change in rankings back like before. I wanted to see if you have found a different issue or if you might have also been link spammed by a similar site.
Dogfish
-
Thanks, Moosa. I have investigated in Webmaster tools and I don't seem to have any notice from Google. I haven't done any black-hat SEO on this site however these ranking decreases are more than the average fluctuation...
-
Probably you are talking about Penguin update. Yes Google do target doggy links! The best way to check if you website has been penalize by search engine or not is by getting in to the Google Webmaster tool and see if you received any manual penalty email If yes, you know where you are standing if not then match the date of the update with the date when your traffic and rankings dropped significantly, if they match (which I think it does) then you probably are attacked by Google.
As far as the competitors are concerns who are not dropped for those keywords, there could be two reasons for it. They might have more quality links in this link profile or maybe they have seen a drop on other keywords they might be targeting.
What you should be doing?
If you are attached by Google what you should be doing is auditing your links, removing the bad links, update a disavow file and finally start building some highest quality links so that Google can see you are working hard and lift the penalty accordingly.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Consistent drop every time after ranking good for few days: Same experience?
Hi all, We been facing this ranking fluctuation issue for over an year. Every time we made some changes for better optimisation. We improve rank but eventually drop after few days. Most of the changes we employed are On-page like page loading, fixing broken links & redirects, page titles optimisation, etc. When can see the ranking improvement for our main keywords and related keywords for a while and we drop with in a week eventually. I wonder if someone face the same issue and any thoughts on this scenario? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Nofolow links drive to losing ranking
Hello there,
Algorithm Updates | | Goran024
I am an owner of mobilnishop website. We selling mobile phones. As you know , new phones coming every few days and they starting to be old after 1-2 years. So I decided to all pages which present old (discontinued) phones make them "noindex". I this way I meant to to focus google on new pages ( for new phones). After 1 year I find a huge losing trafic and key word position on goole. For example, word :
"mobilni telefoni " from 2 place I move to 11. So what I find out is that I LOST LINK JUICE. Is it possible that google does not see given link of my noindex pages? It look that I made auto goal.
Any opinion? Suggest ?0 -
Timeline for 301 Redirects to Take Full Effect in SEO Rankings?
Hey, I am working on transitioning a website and all of my current URL's will be slightly changed (moving to dynamic pages). I understand that I will need to 301 redirect all the old pages to their new counterparts but I would like to know how long it will take for the 301 redirects to take full effect in the search rankings. I ask because my site is an e-commerce site that receives 90% of it's business in January and the transition would take place December 15th. If my search rankings are not back up to par by January 1st then I will take a drastic hit to revenue. Please help this SEO noob out!
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2221 -
Google Local Algorithm Changes?
I was wondering if you have heard about any Google Local algorithm changes. We have about 200 franchise locations. Some of our locations have dropped significantly over the past few weeks. Locations that were showing up in the 1-3 positions are now no longer showing on the first page. This is for very relevant phrases for our main line of business (which is also in our business name)... ‘Phrase, CITY NAME’. These locations have plenty of positive Google reviews. We would typically rank well for a phrase like that based on our relevance. I did some brainstorming. Do you think any of these could have any impact? Google is all about things looking and feeling natural including link building, etc. We have used Yext which made a lot of changes across the web to fix addresses, etc. Do you think Google may be seeing this as unnatural? Too many changes at to many sites in to short a period of time? Along those same lines, do you think Google may be penalizing some of our franchise pages for being to ‘perfect’? It would be ‘natural’ for addresses to have some difference across the web and a bit unnatural to have them all match so perfectly. I know that Google has always stated the business name should be listed in Google Local the way it is listed to the general public. Things such as “Business Name Boston” should be listed as “Business Name”. Each of our franchise locations is named in house to reflect their geo location..... "Business Name Boston", "Business Name St. Louis". Many of our competitors also use the practice of attaching geo terms as well. Do you think we may be getting hit with a penalty now even though we have listed things on Google with the Geo term for years.... and is how WE refer to each location? Is it possible that by working with Yext, we drew attention to this practice? Should we remove our local listings geo term on Google Local? How about across the web? We are in a business that does not require customers to come to our location. Some of our locations have not suppressed the address in their local listings while others have. Many of our competitors have not. Do you think this could play into it? Some of our locations that are not showing in Local have good organic results. Have you heard anything about Google dropping Local if they show in organic? I know Google has been looking at social media more and more and I believe they will continue to do so. If our local pages have no social presence, could this adversely affect things? (I think this is probably not the case…. but wanted to throw it out there) I have noticed that in some cases where Local has dropped, we have multiple offices in that metro area. Is it possible that this could affect things? Have you heard of any Local algorithm changes? I know they are releasing a new dashboard sporadically, could this be in conjunction with a larger Local algorithm change? Our CMS tool does not allow us to change Title/Meta per page (I know... terrible!!). So every page has the same title and same meta description. (We are changing our CMS system! Can't wait!). Could this play into it? Thanks for any feedback!
Algorithm Updates | | MABES1 -
Google Algo Update In Que. What consititues over optimization?
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401732,00.asp According to this, Google is bringing the hammer down soon on another 10-20% of the search results. While we don't advocate keyword stuffing, exchanging links, or anything too risky I am still concerned. Do we know if the example "perfectly optimized page"; http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization is now going to be penalty bait? Is this over stuffing? Also, how might this effect ecommerce sites in particular?
Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com2 -
Algorithmic Update?
Does anyone know if there's been an algorithmic update for google.co.uk in the last couple of days? My site has dropped 15 places or more for all of it's terms and I'm trying to work out the cause!!! Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
My google ranking is coming up but not so much with yahoo and bing. Could someone give me some advice?
I know that no question is supposed to be a dumb questions so I am going to go for it... Our keyword ranking on google for one of our companies capitol collision is getting better all the time but the same can't be said for yahoo or bing. Could you please offer some advice on how to improve this as well? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | allstatetransmission0 -
How To Rank High In Google Places?
Hello SEOmoz, This question has been hounding me for a long time and I've never seen a single reliable information from the web that answers it. Anyway here's my question; Supposing that there are three Google places for three different websites having the same categories and almost same keywords and same district/city/IP how does Google rank one high from the other? Or simply put if you own one of those websites and you would want to rank higher over your competitors in Google places Search results how does one do it? A number of theories were brought up by some of my colleagues: 1. The age of the listing 2. The number of links pointing to the listing (supposing that one can build links to ones listing) 3. The name/url of the listing, tags, description, etc. 4. The address of the listing. 5. Authority of the domain (linked website) You see some listings have either no description, and only one category and yet they rank number one for a specific term/keyword whereas others have complete categories, descriptions etc. If you could please give me a definite answer I will surely appreciate it. Thank you very much and more power!
Algorithm Updates | | LeeAnn300