Fetch as Google temporarily lifting a penalty?
-
Hi, I was wondering if anyone has seen this behaviour before? I haven't!
We have around 20 sites and each one has lost all of its rankings (not in index at all) since the medic update apart from specifying a location on the end of a keyword.
I set to work trying to identify a common issue on each site, and began by improving speed issues in insights. On one site I realised that after I had improved the speed score and then clicked "fetch as google" the rankings for that site all returned within seconds.
I did the same for a different site and exactly the same result. Cue me jumping around the office in delight! The pressure is off, people's jobs are safe, have a cup of tea and relax.
Unfortunately this relief only lasted between 6-12 hours and then the rankings go again. To me it seems like what is happening is that the sites are all suffering from some kind of on page penalty which is lifted until the page can be assessed again and when it is the penalty is reapplied.
Not one to give up I set about methodically making changes until I found the issue. So far I have completely rewritten a site, reduced over use of keywords, added over 2000 words to homepage. Clicked fetch as google and the site came back - for 6 hours..... So then I gave the site a completely fresh redesign and again clicked fetch as google, and same result. Since doing all that, I have swapped over to https, 301 redirected etc and now the site is completely gone and won't come back after fetching as google. Uh!
So before I dig myself even deeper, has anyone any ideas?
Thanks.
-
Unfortunately it's going to be difficult to dig deeper into this without knowing the site - are you able to share the details?
I'm with Martijn that there should be no connection between these features. The only thing I have come up with that could plausibly cause anything like what you are seeing is something related to JavaScript execution (and this would not be a feature working as it's intended to work). We know that there is a delay between initial indexing and JavaScript indexing. It seems plausible to me that if there were a serious enough issue with the JS execution / indexing that either that step failed or that it made the site look spammy enough to get penalised that we could conceivably see the behaviour you describe - where it ranks until Google executes the JS.
I guess my first step to investigating this would be to look at the JS requirements on your site and consider the differences between with and without JS rendering (and if there is any issue with the chrome version that we know executes the JS render at Google's side).
Interested to hear if you discover anything more.
-
Hey, it’s good to have a fresh pair of eyes on it. There may something else as simple that I’ve missed.
Rankings check on my Mac, 2 x webservers via Remote Desktop in different locations, 2 x independent ranking checkers and they all show the same... recovery for 12ish hours, along with traffic and conversions. Then nothing.
When the rankings dissapear I can hit fetch as again straight away and they come straight back. If I leave it for days, then they’re gone for days, until I hit fetch then straight back.
cheers
-
Ok, that still doesn't mean that they're not personalized. But I'll skip on that part for now.
In the end, the changes that you're seeing aren't triggered by what you're doing with Fetch as Google. I'll leave it up to some others to see if they'll shine a light on the situation. -
Hi,
Thanks,
They’re not personalised as my ranking checkers don’t show personalised results
-
Hi,
I'm afraid I have to help you with this dream, there is no connection whatsoever between the rankings and the feature to Fetch as Google within Google Search Console. What likely is happening is that you're already getting personalized results and within a certain timeframe, the ads won't be shown as the results will be different as Google thinks that you've already seen the first results on the page the first time that you Googled this.
Fetch as Google doesn't provide any signal to the regular ranking engines to say: "Hey, we've fetched something new and now it's going to make an impact on this". Definitely not at the speed that you're describing (within seconds).
Martijn.
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
-
Can Google Crawl This Page?
I'm going to have to post the page in question which i'd rather not do but I have permission from the client to do so. Question: A recruitment client of mine had their website build on a proprietary platform by a so-called recruitment specialist agency. Unfortunately the site is not performing well in the organic listings. I believe the culprit is this page and others like it: http://www.prospect-health.com/Jobs/?st=0&o3=973&s=1&o4=1215&sortdir=desc&displayinstance=Advanced Search_Site1&pagesize=50000&page=1&o1=255&sortby=CreationDate&o2=260&ij=0 Basically as soon as you deviate from the top level pages you land on pages that have database-query URLs like this one. My take on it is that Google cannot crawl these pages and is therefore having trouble picking up all of the job listings. I have taken some measures to combat this and obviously we have an xml sitemap in place but it seems the pages that Google finds via the XML feed are not performing because there is no obvious flow of 'link juice' to them. There are a number of latest jobs listed on top level pages like this one: http://www.prospect-health.com/optometry-jobs and when they are picked up they perform Ok in the SERPs, which is the biggest clue to the problem outlined above. The agency in question have an SEO department who dispute the problem and their proposed solution is to create more content and build more links (genius!). Just looking for some clarification from you guys if you don't mind?
Technical SEO | | shr1090 -
How Google sees my page
When looking for crawlability issues, what is the difference between using webmaster tools Fetch as google, looking at the cached pages in google index site:mypage.com, or using spider simulator tools.
Technical SEO | | shashivzw0 -
Ranking Drop and Google Disavow Requests
My website, www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk has fallen dramatically for the top industry search terms (nile cruise, nile cruises) over the last 12 months from previous page one rankings to page three which has very badly affected us financially. I found, using Linkdetox, that we had thousands of back-links for non-related anchor-text, mainly porn terms, viagra, etc. I have submitted a Disavow file and request about a week ago and wondered firstly if the enormous amount of these links would have helped cause the drop to page three and secondly if the Disavow request will eventually help the website return to better rankings? Thanks,Colin
Technical SEO | | GratefulFred0 -
Google Webmaster Sitemap *pending*
Hey guys, I've noticed that my sitemap has been "pending" for quite some time in Google Webmaster tools. This leads me to believe that Google is not indexing my site. Could someone help me and point me to what I'm doing wrong? My site is The Tech Block
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Unit # No Longer Showing On Google Places
We've noticed that the unit # is no longer showing on a clients Places profile page. Any thoughts on why and if relevant to rankings? Places page - https://skitch.com/kyegrace/8fimr/vuppie-real-estate-team or http://maps.google.ca/maps/place?hl=en&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4GGNI_en-GBCA461CA461&gs_upl=&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&biw=1366&bih=641&wrapid=tlif133037839755610&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=realtor&fb=1&gl=ca&hq=realtor&hnear=0x548673f143a94fb3:0xbb9196ea9b81f38b,Vancouver,+BC&cid=5594900399034912659&ei=o_ZLT4XHM6ObiQKZnbCdDw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=placepage-link&resnum=8&ved=0CIMBEOIJMAc and as it appears in the backend https://skitch.com/kyegrace/8fimk/google-places-analytics Any insight greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | kyegrace0 -
Pages not Indexed after a successful Google Fetch
I am trying to understand why google isn't indexing key content on my site. www.BeyondTransition.com is indexed and new pages show up in a couple of hours. My key content is 6 pages of information for each of 3000 events (driven by mySQL on a wordpress platform). These pages are reached via a search page, but no direct navigation from the home page. When I link to an event page from an indexed page it doesn't show up in search results. When I use fetch on webmaster tools the fetch is successful but is then not indexed - or if it does appear in results it's directed to the internal search page e.g. http://www.beyondtransition.com/site/races/course/race110003/ has been fetched and submitted with links but when I search for BeyondTransition Ironman Cozumel I get these results.... So what have I done wrong and how do I go about fixing it? All thoughts and advice appreciated Thanks Denis
Technical SEO | | beyondtransition0 -
Google causing Magento Errors
I have an online shop - run using Magento. I have recently upgraded to version 1.4, and I installed a extension called Lightspeed, a caching module which makes tremendous improvements to Magento's performance. Unfortunately, a confoguration problem, meant that I had to disable the module, because it was generating errors relating to the session, if you entered the site from any page other than the home page. The site is now working as expected. I have Magento's error notification set to email - I've not received emails for errors generated by visitors. However over a 72 hour period, I received a deluge of error emails, which where being caused by Googlebot. It was generating an erro in a file called lightspeed.php Here is an example: URL: http://www.jacksgardenstore.com/tahiti-vulcano-hammock IP Address: 66.249.66.186 Time: 2011-06-11 17:02:26 GMT Error: Cannot send headers; headers already sent in /home/jack/jacksgardenstore.com/user/jack_1.4/htdocs/lightspeed.php, line 444 So several things of note: I deleted lightspeed.php from the server, before any of these error messages began to arrive. lightspeed.php was never exposed in the URL, at anytime. It was referred to in a mod_rewrite rule in .htaccess, which I also commented out. If you clicked on the URL in the error message, it loaded in the browser as expected, with no error messages. It appears that Google has cached a version of the page which briefly existed whilst Lightspeed was enabled. But I though that Google cached generated HTML. Since when does cache a server-side PHP file ???? I've just used the Fetch as Googlebot facility on Webmaster Tools for the URL in the above error message, and it returns the page as expected. No errors. I've had to errors at all in the last 48 hours, so I'm hoping it's just sorted itself out. However I'm concerned about any Google related implications. Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Ben
Technical SEO | | atticus70 -
Duplication Penalty through Specs?
I am trying to figure our how to correct a recently incurred duplication penalty on a partner site. I didn't see any posts on this yet specific to my problem. The site used to be ranked on page 1 of Google for all important keywords but now we ran into the situation that many pages were bumped to pos 100 or lower due to duplication issues. This is an aviation site, discussing airplanes and each page discusses a different model but each page also has the specs of the plane and while the data parts are different for each plane the specification terms are the same ,see here: Primary Function:
Technical SEO | | WizardHQ
Crew:
Engine:
Thrust:
Weight Empty:
Max. Weight:
Length:
Wingspan:
Cruise Speed:
Max.Speed:
Climb:
Ceiling:
Range:
First Flight:
Year Deployed: Is there an easy way to get Google to stop including these terms (not the data in the 2nd column) from the page anaysis to prevent this causing the duplication issues we are are seeing due to this? Thanks in advance!0