Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Peter

I've always wondered if it is classed as paid links in Google's eyes?

Hello, anybody there?

We're still very confused as to why we're ranking in 1st position for our money keyword in Canada, Australia and Hong Kong to name a few countries but we're ranking in 113th position in the USA.

We used to rank in 2nd position for our money keyword in the USA.

Why would this be?

"When you disavow links or domains it doesn't cause them to be removed from your webmaster tools list of links. "

That's strange because most of the links we've disavowed have disappeared from our GWT. How can this be?

We have disavowed a lot of spam links that were pointing to our website.

We've disavowed on a domain level and a lot of links have now disappeared on GWT.

However, there is a domain that we disavowed where MOST of the links have disappeared in GWT but there are STILL some remaining even a month and a half after disavowing.

The disavow file has been sent in numerous times since then with new domains.

Is there an explanation as to why some links still remain on this domain even though most of them have been disavowed and removed from GWT?

Hello Mike and Remus, Thanks for the quick responses!

Mike, unfortunately for us, the drop did not coincide with any documented google updates. Links have also remained stable, in fact, ahrefs reported link profiles for AU and CA specific locations are weak at best.

Mike, you raise good points, however the variations found in the countries we are ranking in top positions are nowhere to be found on our site. It is the commonly universal keywords, used in all locations, that are ranking excellent abroad but horrible domestically. Also, the ranking difference I'm referring to is quite drastic, literally 1st position in CA and AU but having dropped all the way to 10th-12th pages in the U.S., with pages displaying relatively similar user metrics.

I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with keywords ranking drastically differently in other English speaking countries, and if they have identified the cause, outside of regionally popular vocabulary or user metrics?

What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia?  Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)?

Appreciate any insights