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I read on SEOLand that there may have been an algorithm update on Feb. 1st. I got our rankings report back today and was shocked to see 103 of our 530 tracked keyword phrases went down over the last week, especially on pages that we recently updated (like a month ago max). The pages we updated went up in ranking the last two weeks in a row, but went down this week, considerably (like #14 to #34). We also submitted a sitemap update last Friday to Search Console. Checked on Search Console and noticed we also had a dip in CTR around the same time period. I know the rumored changes were targeting PBN, but could other changes be in play as well? I know we have (against my advice) a few syndicating blogging partnerships who we share content with from time to time, but nothing like a PBN. Wondering if anyone else saw a considerable dip in their rankings?

Hi all, I have a bit of a conundrum for you all pertaining to a tracking link issue I have run into on a clients site. They currently have over duplicate content. Currently, they have over 15,000 pages being crawled (using Screaming Frog) but only 7,000+ are legitimate pages in the sense of they are not duplicates of themselves. The client is using Omniture instead of Google Analytics and using an advanced tracking system on their site for internal and external links (ictids and ectids) in the URL parameters. This is creating thousands of duplicated pages being crawled by Google (as seen on their Search Console and on Screaming Frog). They also are in the middle of moving over from http to https and have thousands of pages currently set up for both, again, creating a duplicate content issue. What I have suggested for the tracking links is setting up a URL parameter in Search Console for these tracking links. I've also suggested they canonical all tracking links to point to the clean page so the pages that have already been indexed point to the correct clean url. Does this seam like the appropriate strategy? Additionally, I've told them before they submit a new sitemap to Google, they need to switch their website over to https to avoid worsening their duplicate content issue. They have not submitted a sitemap to Google Search Console since March 2015. Thank you for any help you can offer!