The Google Algo update that happened 1-8 is KILLING my rankings
-
Does anyone know what happened?? I have a great website, we ranked very highly for a slew of industry keywords, #1 in most of our top-money kws....and our keywords have been in freefall since the update. Help?!
-
Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of opinions on what happened and not a lot of solid evidence (including my own, which is inconclusive, sadly). Google tightened up on something content-related, it seems, but we're not sure what.
It's hard to speak in generalarities, but if I had to start somewhere, I'd be looking for Panda-like signals. Do you have content that could be considered thin, and/or are you facing duplication either within your site or across competitors sites? Is your site generally too big, in terms of indexed pages, for your authority (i.e. the strength of your link profile)? It may simply be that Google turned up the volume on a few factors.
If this is content-related, the good news is that fixes should generally impact your rankings fairly quickly. This doesn't seem to be a Penguin-like situation.
-
Hi, Pete.
In our case it was one time drop over couple days and then leveled out and stays around the same spot - beginning of the second page.
What confuses me the most is this: neither us or our competitors have had any major (if any at all) changes in content (at least on main landing and ranking pages). Neither backlink profiles have changed. At the same time our rankings had experienced that drop and we are having trouble recovering. However, main competitors didn't have that drop.
P.S. All metrics in our case are better than competitors.
Any ideas on what's happening / what we should pay extra attention at?
-
Unfortunately, the industry has developed very little insight into what happened in the January "core update". Multiple tools recorded historically high rankings flux, but Google would only say that it wasn't Penguin and the patterns in our data are unclear.
There were claims that, while it might not have been a Panda refresh, sites impacted by Panda previously were also hit by this update (sorry, I know that's a little confusing). This would suggest that the target of the update was more likely on-page factors and general content quality factors than link-based factors. That said, "quality" is a very nebulous and subjective term. We're not sure what specifically Google targeted.
Have you seen specific types of keywords and/or specific pages drop, or is the drop happening across the entire site and all keywords? Step 1 is always to isolated the targets as much as possible. Have your rankings continued to drop since January 8, or was this a single-day drop that then leveled out (I'm interpreting "have been in freefall" as still dropping)?
-
Hi there.
Oh yeah, Many have the same problem. Me as well. And I can't figure out what's going on. As well as looks like there is no info from Google what was update about.
There is a suggestion floating around that it might be regarding backlinks quality, but there is no proof or reliable info about that either.
Here are my two topics I've asked, you can see what people are saying:
https://moz.com/community/q/recovery-after-recent-google-update
https://moz.com/community/q/january-2016-massive-rankings-fluctuations
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
-
50% Visibility drop following June 2021 Google Update
Hello everyone,
Algorithm Updates | | yacpro13
We've observed a 50% drop in our Visibility score in the last week. This is our biggest drop ever, which coincides with June Google updates. We're an established ecommerce website located in Canada. This has obviously severely impacted sales. I'm frantically searching for information regarding fixes / implementations to recover asap, but if anybody could point us in the right direction, that would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
Google Index
Hi all, I just submit my url and linked pages along with xml map to index. How long does it take google to index my new pages?
Algorithm Updates | | businessowner0 -
Can someone explain the attached rankings?
I just don't understand how we can have a long list of 1's and 2's in google, but in Yahoo and Bing, some are close, some are in the 20's and some are not even in the top 50. Is there something that Yahoo and Bing care about, that google doesn't? I know about the meta language being more important for Yahoo and Bing than Google, so I added that. There's nothing I can do about the domain age, which I know is important to Yahoo and Bing. Is there anything else? thanks, Ruben [URL]]([URL=http://imgur.com/Vem594l][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Vem594l.jpg[/IMG][/URL]) [IMG]](http://i.imgur.com/Vem594l.jpg[/IMG])
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Am I the only one experiencing this Google SERP problem?
I perform Google searches every single day, sometimes several times in a day. These searches have nothing to do with being a marketer--they're simply as a consumer, researcher, person who needs a question answered, or in other words: a typical person. For about the past month or so, I have been unsuccessful at finding what I'm looking for on the first try EVERY SINGLE TIME. Yes, I mean it--every single time. I'm left either going all the way to the third page, clicking dozens of results and retuning to the SERPs, or having to start over with a differently worded query. This is far too often to be a coincidence. Has this been happening to anymore else? I know there was a recent significant algorithm update, right? I always look at algorithm updates through the eyes of an SEO, but I'm currently looking at it through the eyes for an average searcher, and I'm frustrated! It's been like trying to find something on Bing!
Algorithm Updates | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Best practice for cleaning up multiple Google Places listings and multiple Google accounts when logins were lost.
We are an inbound marketing agency, most of our clients are not relying on local seo. I have a pretty good understanding of it when starting fresh but not so much in joining a "movie in progress" kind of scenario. Recently we've brought on two clients who have had their websites in place for awhile, have made small attempts at marketing themselves online over the years and its resulted in multiple Google places listings, variations of the company names (one of them changed their name), worried there are yet more accounts out there they aren't aware of, etc (analytics, and others from well intentioned employees and past service providers - no internal leadership at the company level). In reading Google help forums I'm seeing some recently having their accounts suspended when they try to clean things up - in one case a person setup a new Google account thinking he would start fresh and in trying to claim listings, get rid of duplicates, etc. his account was suspended. What is the CURRENT recommended course of action in situations like these? With all the changes going on with Google, I don't know which route to take and have combed the Internet reading articles about this (including Google's resources) - would like some current real world advise.
Algorithm Updates | | rhgraves651 -
Why would Google read different pages to rank for a keyword?
I have noticed a large drop in a number of keywords in the latest rankings report. I have checked the results on the 'Ranking History Graph' and it appears that Google is reading different pages for the specific keyword and therefore, giving large fluctuations in ranking dependant on the page from week to week. Why would this be happening?
Algorithm Updates | | Benjamin3790 -
Google site links on sub pages
Hi all Had a look for info on this one but couldn't find much. I know these days that if you have a decent domain good will often automatically put site links on for your home if someone searches for your company name, however has anyone seen these links appear for sub pages? For example, lets say I had a .com domain with /en /fr /de sub folders, each seoed for their location. If I were to then have domain.com/en/ as no1 in Google for my company in the UK would I be able to get site links under this or does it only work on the 'proper' homepage domain.com/ A client of mine wants to reorganise their website so they have different location sections ranking in different markets but they also want to keep having sitewide links as they like the look of it Thanks Carl
Algorithm Updates | | Grumpy_Carl0