Interesting keyword ranking issue

[3Amigos]

Hello Everybody,

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Without further ado, I'll jump straight to it:

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk is the web site of a UK based data recovery company. Historically the site has always ranked well for popular data recovery keywords in the UK, with page 1 rankings for most things data recovery related. However, lately things seem to have changed for our most important phrase "data recovery".

We noticed several months ago that Google had started to favour the page  http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm instead of http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ when a search for "data recovery" (and similar) was performed.

This didn't concern us that much as our rankings remained good. However now, neither of these pages seems to be ranking well when a search for "data recovery" is performed (I gave up at Page 5 - who looks past there when searching?).

I would appreciate your input on this please - especially about the following points:

1. Why have these two pages now seemingly disappeared from SERPS when a search for "data recovery" is performed ?

2. Why has Google chosen http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm rather than http://www.dataclinic.co.uk  ?

3. Is this just something to do with UK results ?

4. Other sites I would expect NOT to see in the top results have started appearing - despite their link profiles etc remaining poor - perhaps Google is doing a bit of reorganisation with SERPS related to data recovery at the moment ?

5. And perhaps, most importantly - do you think we need to do anything about our current lack of visibility ?? As I mentioned, we've always ranked well, so these results are puzzling... Should search results revert "back to normal" in a day or so, or am I missing something and need to take action ??

Thanks for any input on this - we would be very grateful indeed for you help !

Kind Regards,

Sue

[3Amigos]

Hi Heather,

Thanks for the reply. The page you mention (<cite>www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-raid-recovery.htm) has had a decent ranking for a while but it is specific & meant to appeal to a certain subset of data recovery traffic, rather than the whole lot. I think I'll just wait for a couple of days and see if there is any change... and perhaps there may be some more input into this discussion too !</cite>

Thanks for your time

Sue

[heatherrobinson]

I'm in the UK and see the site at position 11 on Google.co.uk with this page <cite>www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-raid-recovery.htm</cite>

Results change all the time, have you tried different machines, logging in and out of Google, disabling Web History etc?

[dumperama]

Actually, I don't think so. I mean that my SERP is that different.

Why I think so? I just checked with an independent tool (searchmetrics) which has the rankings of up to 16th of October. So as of October 16th, you're ranked 11, losing 6.

Have you installed unpersonalized SERP for Firefox/Chrome? Maybe it has something to do with that. Even though it doesn't really make sense that personalization filters out your own project.

Even though you certainly know it: Sites that you "traded" places with are datlabs, unirecovery and mjmdatarecovery (new)

[3Amigos]

Hi - Thanks for the input... To reply to your points

1. Hmmm, it seems you are getting different results in Germany... the data-recovery.htm page is not appearing on the UK results....

2. Yes, point taken - would that be the main reason though do you think?

3. It's ok - it seems your results are different to mine, which sort of answers the question

4. Specifically, http://tierradatarecovery.co.uk  - in UK results they are featuring very highly on a lot of top keywords - previously they were virtually no where

5. Yes - that's all being done anyway... I think it's probably important not to act in haste only to regret it later.

Thanks again

Sue

[dumperama]

For me, it is ranked 16 for "data recovery" and it is the page "www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm"

1. Taking this into consideration, disappeared does not apply, even though 16 is really not intriguing

2. Just a hint: document name "data-recovery.htm" as well as 65 keyword mentions as opposed to 23 on starting page

3. I don't understand that one

4. which websites are you talking about? I see strong competition as big names like chip appear, but I guess that's due to me being from Germany.

5. Nobody can really answer that one regarding changing back to what you judge normal. Observe it for a week, then take action. I mean, establishing good back links, optimizing on-page is never wrong - so also not now.