Ranking drop from 6 op 23 in one day - freaking out
-
Dear, Moz
We have been hard at work going some off site and on site SEO. However yesterday we got around 1600 404 errors from google, and ranking dropped from 7 in front page to 25.
What we did: I found an error in Htacces, where my partner had this (rewritebase with double // and rule with // - I quess this started creating urls for google, because twww.website.com//category-category-cateory
OK. But google says that they will not effect your rankings because 404s?
Second think i found was that we had some urls, which had canonical tag to a page called search. Now that search (duplicate of homepage) we 301 to our main homepage. Can that effect ranking? You have 404s that have canonical to a page that itselft redirects (301) to homepage.
We also removed the / splash. Nothing more.. Below is the htaccess, that had the double // error. Please comment.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase //
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://website.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond $1 ^(index.php)?$ [OR]
RewriteCond $1 .(gif|jpg|css|js|png|ico)$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.)$ - [S=1]
RewriteRule .//index.php [L]
DirectoryIndex index.php -
Hi,
im a little lost on what you mean but a 404 is essentially a none page it doesn't exists so it would need nor have a canonical unless perhaps to its self if you have a fixed 404 page. you may 301 a url that was a 404 page to a 200 page but then it wouldnt be a 404 so its a bit of a paradox!
-
Thanks Greg. I think it was. Now we back at 10th and 12th but still some way to go.
But is it then true, that if i have some page(that now is 404) which had a canonical to another one which then was 301d, this is bad and mixed signals? There should be never any 404 that have canonical to your page which is 301d to main website. Correct?
-
And to top all of that off it seems like there was an update on the 8th! it was just a regular one but i can imagine combined with all the issue you've had it was a bit of a perfect storm. Give it a few days to be re crawled and it should adjust. Hopefully this is a very good lesson on why to be very careful with Htaccess.
good luck.
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
-
Ranking at 2 and 3 for a Desired Keyword - But Missing #1
I have a keyword I usually rank #1 for "Maui Beach Wedding" that I am now ranking 2 and 3 for with two separate pages below: My home page: https://simplemauiwedding.net and the below internal page I am linking from my home page that I really want that term to rank for. https://simplemauiwedding.net/beach-wedding-packages What is the best way to pass the authority from one to another for this particular keyword. I want this URL https://simplemauiwedding.net/beach-wedding-packages to rank for the term, not my home page which has a link pointing to this page from my home page which I was hoping would point the authority to it for the term. What are some other ways to signal which page I prefer Google to pick up for the keyword I want to rank for? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Can any one give some advise on how to work out which back links are bad
we are trying to clean up our site and believe we have bad back links can any one tell me how to work out which ones to disavow
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Why am I ranking on both Bing and Yahoo and yet the rankings are declining on Google
I'm seeing ranking go up on both Bing and Yahoo and yet they are going down on Google. I did see a bunch of spammy links show up about a month ago but have managed to get all those taken down although did not get any warnings from Google in Webmaster tools about them was more of a preemptive measure. The site in question. http://www.gocitrusnow.com
On-Page Optimization | | mwaters19790 -
Help required to get the right landing page ranking
Hi, I've taken on a new ski client who wants to rank on page 1 on google.co.uk for [ski instructor courses]. When I first put that keyword into Moz rank tracker the landing page http://www.snowrehab.com/ski-instructor-courses/revelstoke-12-week-csia-level-1-&-2.html came up and it was ~ #30 Instead we wanted http://www.snowrehab.com/ski-instructor-courses to rank and I've optimised the copy (perhaps over optimised?) and have been redirecting & building links to that page. When I check in the SERPs (as unpersonalised as I can get) that new page appears to be ranking ~ 20 and the old page is nowhere to be seen. So far so good. However in the rank tracker Moz says the new page (exact URL) isn't ranking (not in top 50) and that when I put in 'entire subdomain' that the old page still comes up (and has improved to ~ 25). Any help / advice really appreciated! I want to prove to the client the rankings have improved / work I've been doing has helped!
On-Page Optimization | | richardpatey0 -
Page Rank drop from 4 to ?
Our site (ecommerce) has been around since 1998. The pagerank has gone from a 4 to a ? The Moz score is still good, but traffic is way down. Never got a warning from Google, and were never part of a BH linking scheme? I'm puzzled? There are some duplicate content issues and missing meta tags, but they were on customer login pages that we have since blocked? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | rglaubinger0 -
Number of pages crawled in dropping from 4 to 2
The report on our campaign shows that up to 2 pages are being crawled now from 4. However, our site has more pages than this. We recently inserted code to allow crawlers. what can we do to resolve this? please assist.v
On-Page Optimization | | seoworx1230 -
Lost Page Rank after directing http:// to WWW?
Hi I am trying to redirect all the non www urls to WWW. After I redirected them, most of my category page PR are dropped to 0. Can someone please tell me if this is the normal after effect after the redirect? Example url: this is PR2 before the redirect http://www.ilovebodykits.com/category/95/Body_Kits_Front_Bumpers.html
On-Page Optimization | | ilovebodykits0 -
SERP Rankings for Certain Keywords
For some of our keywords, we rank on page one in google, but the page is an individual product and not the catelgory page? Any idea why this is happening? Thanks for your Help!
On-Page Optimization | | MRabidoux0