Location-Aware Browsing issue. Could it cause a drop in rankings
-
Hello Mozzers.
A client has seen big drop in their organic rankings in google.co.uk. Desktop results have dropped from page one to page three and mobile results have completely gone. They have recently added Location-Aware Browsing to the site so that it attempts to find you location and add this to the search box. However this appears to be in a loop and doesn't then turn off once you have allowed it. It keeps appearing in both Firefox and Chrome and asking for permission to use you location. Could this have resulted in the ranking drop?
There have also rolled out a new mobile version and this has the same issue. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
TH
-
Hi!
Do you have any news about this issue?
-
Thanks seoman. Have spoken to the client and they also had some hosting and DNS issues at the start of the week that I think helped to kill the rankings. When you look at the cached pages in Google they are all 404s so nothing was cached. Fingers crossed its all now sorted and once re- indexed the rankings will recover.
-
A short answer is probably yes.
In a bit more detail...
Google hates you requesting/collecting data yourself, especially if you're webpages not secure.
Secondly, the script may be treated as dodgy by some of the big search engines. I.e. potentially obtaining sensitive information.
Thirdly, check there isn't some other form of penalty.
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
-
Intermittent 404 - What causes them and how to fix?
Hi! I'm working on a client site at the moment and I've discovered a couple of pages that are 404ing but producing a 200 OK response. However, I have checked these URLs again and some are now producing a 404 Error response. No changes have been made (that I'm aware of) so it appears that the URLs are returning both 200 OK and 404 Error responses intermittently. Any ideas what could cause this and the best solution? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | daniel-brooks0 -
Desktop Ranking Disappeared After URL Change; Mobile Ranking Improved
A client's developer moved a site onto a new (WordPress) CMS, where the only change was URLs - the front end code stayed the same. The site is 10+ years old and previously had fantastic rankings (#1-4) with inner pages for some relatively generic search phrases (eg 10,000 searches / month in the UK, per Keyword Planner). Now, on Desktop searches the site isn't appearing anywhere in the 300+ results for a key search phrase, where it used to rank between #2-4; however over the last 3 weeks on Mobile the site ranks better than before, even though the site isn't at all mobile-friendly (it's over 10 years old). During the move, there were some errors by their developer: mistakenly left in a sitewide rel=canonical tag referring to the homepage 3-4 301s before finally reaching new URLs a lot of 301s missed (250+ crawl errors appeared in Search Console) page content differentiation by parameter, instead of individual URLs For example, the page that used to rank for the targeted phrase, this left 4 different URLs indexed, with the same content. To tackle this, we have so far: put in correct rel=canonical tags set up Search Console to recognise URL parameter as differentiating content fixed all crawl errors appearing in Search Console added a link direct to the problem page, direct from the homepage stopped duplicate content being indexed (including for the page in question) ensured the page load speed is still good (< 0.75s) Ranking for Desktop over Mobile would make sense, but not Mobile over Desktop! I'd really appreciate any advice on how to tackle this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | magicdust0 -
Fetch as Google issues
HI all, Recently, well a couple of months back, I finally got around to switching our sites over to HTTPS://. In terms of rankings etc all looks fine and we have not move about much, only the usual fluctuations of a place or two on a daily basis in a competitive niche. All links have been updated, redirects in place, the usual https domain migration stuff. I am however, troubled by one thing! I cannot for love nor money get Google to fetch my site in GSC. No matter what I have tried it continues to display "Temporarily unreachable". I have checked the robots.txt and it is on a new https:// profile in GSC. Has anyone got a clue as I am stumped! Have I simply become blinded by looking too much??? Site in Q. caravanguard co uk. Cheers and looking forward to your comments.... Tim
Technical SEO | | TimHolmes0 -
Structure Data Issue
HiI found few errors in Google webmaster tools under structure data. The error shows "Missing: name' but when I click 'Test Live Data' it shows 'All good'. Currently we are using Drupal CMS and please find attached error screenshot.Please advice on this issue.Thanks,SatlaqlGEyp7
Technical SEO | | TrulyTravel0 -
404 issues
Hello, Some time ago, something like a month and a half) I have removed all 404 errors from the google index and the webmaster tools have removed them already, however yesterday moz found the same 404 errors that i have removed from indexing (tose pages are deleted or redirected by the site developer). What could be an issue here and why webmaster tools are not registering those 404 errors but moz analytics does. And the other question is if those pages do not exist can i track where the placed? I tried dowloading moz crawl test, but the refering source was not provided. I would highly appreciate anyones help. Thank you
Technical SEO | | rikomuttik0 -
Fluctuation in Ranking for the keywords
We were ranking well for most of the keywords.These keywords were at first page i.e mostly @ 1st and 2nd position in Google.But we have put the following tag ie no index tag for our pages by mistake and after that the ranking fluctuated & fell down in Google search results as our pages were out of index in Google .We have removed the noindex tag after encountering the problem.Now I can see my pages are cached & indexed in Google after submitting to index in Google webmaster tool.Can I regain my ranking for the keywords and within how many days I would regain my previous ranking?
Technical SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Do I have panda issues?
Hi , I m looking for suggestions for my website i believe is suffering from the panda updates. Can someone point out what possible issues within the site that might be causing with recent panda updates? here is the link http://goo.gl/St3aP thanks nick.
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
Ranking above PLACE PAGES
What does it take for results to show up above Place Page results. It seems like Google Local gets a lot of emphasis . Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | musillawfirm0