So weird sudden drop in rankings
-
Hi All, ok so at the beginning of July we launched our new website, SEVEN weeks later we have dropped completly off all rankings what-so-ever, (except brand) but weirdly if i pan between browsers we dont use (for saved searches/cookies etc) sometimes the rankings show up where they used to be.
Whats strange is we get crawled daily but it took seven weeks for our rankings to drop, ive done all testing i can - no manual actions, no updates when we dropped (15th Aug) no real differences in webmaster tools, no crawl errors, no massive rise in 404s, 500s etc etc, im really a bit stumped!
Any help would be mucho appreciated in diagnosing this stumper!
-
Its not a new website (3 and half years) we think its 301s on our product lines (200 URLS) whats the quickest way to deal with 301s - dont want to be writing up a spreadsheet of every url that we stick into htaccess file!
-
Brand new sites typically get lots of traffic at first because Google sees them as completely fresh content. Then once the content gets older the rankings will drop.
-
Right off the bat, the www and non-www aren't properly redirected. I'm running a crawl right now. I'll let you know if I see anything else.
-
Hi Amelia, it is 3 year old website, 301s have been done in terms of some pages and others have kept the exact same URL as they did previously, the only thing that havent been 301 is product pages which have a different structure now and never where high value content, 301 products is something i am doing currently - we have a LOT of products so if anyone knows of a tool to simplify this please let me know :DApart from that i am stumped, i hate leaving it to see what effects happen in natural course but it is stumping me!
-
Have you recently reblaunched a new version of your old website, or is it a completely new site? Only ask because your original post made me think it was a new company, new website, but your response to James suggests otherwise - 'we have held those keywords for 3 and a half years'...
This makes a difference.
If it's all completely new (new company, new domain, new design) then I think your good listings for 7 weeks were the freshness thing (sorry I call it that...) where Google will give a new site a better place in its index than it necessarily deserves based on links etc because it hasn't had a chance to build any links being so new and all.
If it's a rebrand of an old site then you may want to look at your 301 redirects and make sure they are page-to-page rather than sending everything to the homepage (which is so common I just want to bang my head against a brick wall - highly frustrating for a user, stoooopid for a webmaster). If you've changed domains then you can 'tell' Google via webmaster tools using the change of address tool.
Good luck with your problem - I hope it gets sorted out soon.
-
Hi James, yep i see we are dong ok on bing its a weird one! Masoud, point taken we have got some new content and good links coming inbound, interesting about WMT we have held those keywords for 3 and a half years!
-
Hi
Maybe its a sandbox effect. I suggest you to wait for another week, make contents and update, build brand name and generic links and track the results. I use this strategy when my new site drop like this and it worked.
and another thing, check your content keywords in WMT, if your main keyword is in top 3, you should decrease using it; I had a experience of this, Google thought we are doing keyword stuffing.
-
Wow really struggling with this one also,
Worth mentioning that you are very much in favor with Bing still and rank very well,
I am struggling to understand why so well but not with Google,
I will keep digging, hopefully a few other mozzers will pick this up and take a look,
James
-
Hi James its www.kennelstore.co.uk
-
Can you give a URL ?
Thanks
James
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
-
Moving to New Domain - Ranking impact
I understand that when migrating to a new site, even if done perfectly (page level 301s etc) that rankings will drop in the short term and each site will be impacted differently. I picked up the following comment and was wanting to get a few experts thoughts on whether I can quote this to my client: "In our experience, even when 301's are correctly executed, we see a short term fall back (7-30) days and then about a 90% carry through after that period for about 90 days and then back to full strength. "
Technical SEO | | steermoz80 -
Terrible branded ranking
I am at lost. My website has been live for about 3 months. Typing my name or my direct page title into google puts me on page 15. My site is indexed by google, a site:mywebsitename search - produces 202 results. My on page SEO isn't amazing buy it isn't terrible either. The website has 35+, 500 words+ reviews and a few incoming links from some occasional link building. 0 duplicate content. The website is animexcess.com
Technical SEO | | WebsiteEditor
My thoughts on what might be causing the problem, i am hoping that someone with a bit more SEO knowledge than myself can point me in the right direction. During development, i had duplicate content up on the site as placeholder while i wrote my own - All duplicate content has been removed for about 3 months now, but can this still be affecting me ranking? and to this extent? The entire website is in a sub-directory with 301 redirects - can this be affecting my ranking to this extent? The domain had a prior owner. Waybackmachine tells me that the domain had a page up in 2007. I bought it in 2010. If the prior owner built up a bad rep on this domain can is still be the cause for poor ranking 6 years later? I cannot file a reconsideration request since there are no manual actions taken against my site in WMT, any way around this? Its only been three months. I know 3 months isn't a very long time in the google ranking world but my my 2 week old, built in 1 week, secondary website is ranking on page 1 for some pretty solid terms, so i don't think 3 months is to short a time to expect a bit of results. My website is being crawled daily.
Any advice on how to move forward with fixing my website ranking will be much obliged. Thank you.0 -
How to rank in Google Places
Normally, I don't have a problem with local SEO (more of a multi-channel sort of online marketing guy) but this one has got me scratching my head. Look at https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wedding+venues+in+essex Theres two websites there (fennes and quendon park) that both have a much more powerful DA but don't appear in the Google Places (Google + Business or whatever it's labeled as). Why are websites such as Boreham house ranking top in the map listings? Quendon Park has a Google places listing, it's full of content, the NAP all matches up. Its a stronger website. Boreham House isn't any closer to the centroid than Quendon Park Just got me struggling this one
Technical SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
My whole directory dropped from google
Hi there I have lost a whole directory in Google rankings and this is where my traffic was coming from. Do you know why this would happen? It is the eCommerce part of the site. So if I do site:www.domain.com the site is there and then site:www.domain.com/directory is not there any more. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | vcasebourne0 -
Database Crash affecting our rankings
Here is one for you. We had a database crash, and was down for an hour and 15 minutes, on Dec 18th. During this time our system automatically sent out a 301 redirect to our product home page. (iboats.com/boat-parts-accessories/dm/) On Dec 24th I noticed a huge ranking drop on a lot of our keywords, and some keywords that were serving up the redirect page from our database crash, in place of its normally ranked page. So my assumption is that Google was crawling our site during the database crash and caching the redirect pages in place of our regularly ranked pages. So when a search query is made that would normally display our ranked page, it is now displaying the redirect page from the crawled cache. And on other keywords where we normally would rank for, Google no longer has that page cached, so it drops it from ranking. My question: Does this assumption sound accurate? If so, I'm assuming over time that our past ranked pages will show up once again after Google recrawls those pages and saves them in their cache. I have several sites that were affected with this: boatcovers.iboats.com boatpropellers.iboats.com iboats.com Thanks in advance for your input
Technical SEO | | tdawson090 -
Google ranking downgraded
On Sept 29th our website 'keyword' rankings who totally destroy. We were always #1 to #2 for these keywords 1. listing presentation
Technical SEO | | RandyRoussie
2. real estate presentation Our website is: http://www.agentpresentations.com We asked Google through Webmaster Tools to reconsider the site and they replied back saying nothing was wrong. We run Google Adwords and we contacted them and they looked at the keywords and sent screenshots to us showing the ranking we still there. But they are not... as proven in Webmaster tools. So Adwords told us to ask Webmaster Tools to reconsider the site again. Nothing yet... What do you suggest?0 -
Sites Copying my Content Ranking Higher
A number of sites are copying - either 100% word for word, paragraphs, or sentences of my content and are ranking higher. Some sites are doing this with permission/properly and are linking back to my article Others are not linking back or giving credit. Some of these sites, in some cases are ranking higher than me in Google results. What can I do?
Technical SEO | | ben10000 -
How do 301 redirects affect rankings?
Scenario: example.com/red-shoes gets 301 redirected to example.com/brown-boots because we have stopped selling red shoes and now only sell brown boots (which is a fairly new page with no authority). the red-shoes page ranked well for "red shoes" and "footwear". Will Google still index and show the red-shoes url in the SERPs? Will the "red shoes" and "footwear" keywords still rank well? Or does the redirected/new boots page need to properly support these keywords? The boots page has inherited the juice from the shoes page, but how does it help the boots page rank well? Only for keywords that both pages targeted, like a general "footwear" type keyword? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | akim260