Whats happened to my rankings
-
Hey everyone, I hope someone might be able to help me figure out what has gone wrong here.
I have a website which was slowly growing in rankings. The domain used was a .net
However, It is a UK based business so I shifted this to a .co.uk domain and then followed googles advice in webmaster tools for moving address. ie, copy site, verify in GWMT and then 301 the old site.
Now the .net had 71 indexed pages out of 73. But after 2 months .co.uk only has 41 out of 73 indexed.
At the end of last week I did change the theme on my website although the content / urls have all remained the same. I have gone to check my rankings this morning and the site has totally bombed. Even the own brand name does not ranking in top 10 pages.
I have not done an major link building at all yet for the site and any links that are there are all high quality from industry related authority sites.
Looking at GWMT the latest links all look ok, nothing spammy but one thing I did notice is that it shows the .net domain providing 193 links via 301and also individually a great deal of the links that point to .net but have shown in .co.uk
What I would like to know if have I actually done something wrong? Should I just kill the 301 (i am loathed to do this as a few of the links to this took me a long time to get), after spending a great deal of money developing my site and just starting to see some nice progress in the natural rankings and google has gone and pulled the carpet from under me. I would understand if I was doing something wrong but I have made strenuous efforts to ensure the linking on this site is whiter that white.
Oh, I have had no warnings in my messages at all.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
-
After spending a great deal of time on the webmaster tools forums I have seen that a fair few people have exactly the same type of problem as me. I cant afford to take risks etc with it so just easier to delete the original domain, put in a reconsideration request and start again.
-
When you are redirecting a website, there will be some kind of loss and gain kinda things. But losing ranking completely is a bit unnerving. However, we need to check your website first, we can provide any feedback.
-
Your rankings MAY come back, but it is a big change in googles eyes, even though it's not. The age of your new domain will keep your rankings down, as will the non direct links to your new site.
Google can and most probably will pull the carpet from under you not matter what you do, so your best bet is to NOT rely on google.
I hope your rankings return quickly, but don't get your hopes up.
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
-
Keyword ranking fluctuations
Hi For last month my website was ranking to 5 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company). But recently (28-nov) it's out of 100, some time it's showing on 25 position but not showing in top 5 position. Here is my url (for analysis): https://magnetoitsolutions.com/services/magento-development/ Please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings. Note: There are some other keywords of different pages start getting ranking drop. please let me know is there anything i need to change. Thank
Technical SEO | | harrysamson0 -
Rankings of Subdomains vs. Main Domain
Here's a puzzler... Our main domain (www.ides.com) doesn't appear in Google (but does on Bing and other engines). We think this is due to duplicate content which we're fixing. However our website's subdomains continue to appear prominently in SERPs, even on Google - here are some examples: IDES Prospector = prospector.ides.com IDES = support.ides.com Cycolac FR15 = catalog.ides.com Why would Google penalize a main domain and its subdomains?
Technical SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
My keyword ranking suddenly went down in google.
Hi, Need urgently help, one of our website http://www.bannerbuzz.com keywords ranking is down suddenly since 6-11-2012, even we don't have done any changes on the website & we were on top on many keywords. We have done only one change recently is we have moved our website from shared server to dedicated server on last 21st October & we can see some traffic fluctuation after to redirecting from shared server to dedicated server, also website load time has been increase in Google Analytic, so it that reason to get rank down suddenly?, because all keywords has been down. We have also some affiliate sites like bannerbuzz.ca, bannerbuzz.co.uk & bannerbuzz.com.au which design and coding structure is as same as bannerbuzz.com, so is that a problem (Duplication issue)? We have tried to find out the solution for the same, but we didn't get any proper reason to get rank down suddenly. Can it happened due to dedicated server which we have moved recently or Google has changed anything in algorithm? Can we put website in Google reconsideration to know proper reason about the website? Following are the keywords on which we loose the ranking. Banners
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit
Vinyl Banners
Custom Banners
Vinyl Lettering
Custom Signs
Car Decals We were on top for above all keywords. Your help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks,0 -
Wrong Page Ranking
Higher-level page with more power getting pushed out by weaker page in the SERPs for an important keyword. I don't care about losing the weaker page. Should I: 404 the weaker page and wait for Google to (hopefully) replace it with the stronger page? 301 the weaker page to the stronger page? NOTE: Due to poor communication between content team and myself, the weak and strong pages have similar title tags (i.e, "lawsuits" and "litigation")
Technical SEO | | LCNetwork0 -
Domains redirect influence search rankings
Hi seomoz, I'm currently optimizing a website which is www.photobookworldwide.com and the ranking is on 2nd page, but looking at the result this morning, instead of showing photobookworldwide.com, it show other result which is www.photobooklaos.com on 2nd page for the keyword photobooks. Our web developer using virtual domain, and redirected photobooklaos.com to photobookworldwide.com. Any solution for this? need you guys to help me on this. Cheers Gerald
Technical SEO | | greathokage0 -
Why am I ranking for this
In need of some second opinions here. I have a domain softboxsystems.co.uk which ranks for the keyword sofrigam. It is not meant to! Have posted previously on this but to cut long story short, the clients .com started to rank for this term and then they lost the contract to supply the services so got a legal request to stop ranking for it (it had been seoed so was ranking 100% on off page issues). The client is a UK company so they decided that they would block the .com from google and use the co.uk domain for a period of time instead while they worked on deranking the domain. The .com domain was therefore blocked from the index, the .co.uk homepage would not rank for anything then it turned out that they had placed a canonical tag link from the .co.uk to the blocked .com!!! On my suggestion this was removed and the homepage of the .co.uk appeared in google in a matter of a couple of days (other pages on the site were indexed but not the home). Now, somehow the co.uk domain homepage is ranking for the banned term. I have checked open link and there are not any links pointing to the domain with the anchor of sofigram, nor is the term mentioned onsite. I now have the client panicking on the phone to get the page out of google again asap before the competitors legal people get wind of it. I am still trying to deindex the .co.uk homepage in the short term. I have readded the canonical back to the .com as that worked at not getting that page indexed previously. The main issue I have is how on earth I am ranking for this term in the first place and more importantly how do I stop from ranking for this term! The only terms I can find as anchor text in the moz tools are the keywords I have been seoing for help hehe thanks
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Photography site still not ranking well after over year
I have a photography business In the Orlando Fl market. I have noticed my site: joeyvalyphotography.com Does not rank even In the top 50, for my strongest keyword: Orlando Wedding Photographer However, the keyword Orlando engagement Photography/photographer Ranks Very well, and has been rising I'm rank very rapidly over the last two weeks. I'm not sure why my main keyword is not going anywhere, and what my next move should be. I'm considering spending few fhousand dollars on a n seo company, however I though I could learn how to improve my keyword ranking on my own to no avail. Any and all tips, suggestions, advice, will be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | gaji0 -
Does ViewState affect SEO Rankings
We are redesigning our website and looking at our large data in the viewstate hidden field. Our thoughts are to move to bottom of page but our developers are stating this is an old myth and no resent documentation if it improves our SEO. Does ViewState (big data in hidden fields ) effect SEO in any way? If ViewState (hidden field) is present at the end of HTML document instead of near the start of HTML document then will it increase our ranking in search engines? Does Google or any other engine read the hidden fields? or do they ignore them? Can you point me to some valid documentation to back this up? Feed back is appreciated. Cathy
Technical SEO | | SEO-Team0