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I've been monitoring the performance of some pages via the email Moz sends every week, and until this week two pages that I've managed to get ranking have ranked between 20 and 23 for the specific term. However, today on the email one of the pages for one search term has bombed out of the top 50 while the other page has remained unaffected.

What could be the cause for this? I've looked at Google Webmasters for an indication of a penalty of some sort but there is nothing glaringly obvious. I've no messages on there, and I haven't bought a load of spam links at all.

What else could I check?

Search engines work out how websites rank rather differently from each other. My site has only just had pages rank on Google, while on Bing they're ranked for a number of months. And even then the rankings are different across the two. Like Russ said, you may need to prioritise one over the other. In my case Google has started to take notice of my site even though Bing noticed it months ago. I would bet that sooner or later Yandex will do the same for you.

If you're going to automatically generate the description then I suppose you want to take in to consideration how that description is used by the SERP's. If your description is too long then it won't all be displaying on the SERP and you get the dreaded ...

I'm not sure really there is anything else you need to consider, although obvious data protection rules apply if you're using user data in such a way.

Thanks Rand! I don't know many, well any, people in America so I couldn't work out whether G+ was a runaway success over there compared to here in the UK. But what you say makes total sense in regards to the communities that are heavily used.

In the 4 months we've been putting content on to our Google+ page, hashtagging it and posting on to UK communities we've had zero traffic from it. The same posts generate a good stream of traffic from LinkedIn and Twitter, so I think you're right. The information it provides to the searches are about the only use for it in my opinion.

Yeah I think this is the only benefit I see from it myself, that and the reviews that it provides. I know that Google deliver 2 G+ pages or posts on the first page of search results, whether the user has to be logged in to their "Google/Google+" account for this to happen I'm not sure of though.

You make a good point, but how would you build an audience on Google+ if you don't invest your time on there? Otherwise you're relying on bringing traffic from other platforms to build up your community on there. I can see there are active users on there, but mostly in America.

In several places, Google+ is talked about as something that should be used to help improve the SEO of websites and to engage better with audiences. The problem I am having with this is that these sources are usually from America, and that people I've spoken to in the UK don't even know Google+ exists.

So what I'd like to know, does Google+ give any sort of benefit to UK businesses in terms of SEO, even though it seems it's a platform used mostly in the USA?

I'll look in to confirming ownership of the redirected domains just to make sure everything's above board!

I have some websites that I built a few years ago that are still in existence, but I no longer have access to the sites as they weren't hosted by myself. These sites all carry a "Designed by Me" text on the footer with a link to my (now old) website.

I have since done 301 redirects on the domain names that are used in the footers of these sites so they link directly to my new site. However, will these websites now show up on Google Webmasters for example as external links to my site?

If you're going to automatically generate the description then I suppose you want to take in to consideration how that description is used by the SERP's. If your description is too long then it won't all be displaying on the SERP and you get the dreaded ...

I'm not sure really there is anything else you need to consider, although obvious data protection rules apply if you're using user data in such a way.

Hi Matt,

Yes they all are! I'm going through the responses now and trying out the suggestions.

In the 4 months we've been putting content on to our Google+ page, hashtagging it and posting on to UK communities we've had zero traffic from it. The same posts generate a good stream of traffic from LinkedIn and Twitter, so I think you're right. The information it provides to the searches are about the only use for it in my opinion.