Whats happening with Google UK?
-
Within the last week we have had a handful of our rankings drop dramatically down the SERPS. About 15% but this an estimate and has not been fully investigated yet.
Whilst looking into possible scenarios that could be causing this i wanted to check what the SERPS looked like for the terms that we are still holding position on.
Typing "extending dining tables" into Google UK today i was amazed at what i found...
Ranking in position 1 and 2 is a massive UK furniture store.
But isnt that the same landing page being returned for both positions??It appears to be a navigation problem within the site category tags causing duplicate content. However they have been rewarded with the top two positons subsequently pushing our website onto page two.
I find it so frustrating that we listen to Googles best practices when it comes to pagination issues yet this is how our hard work is rewarded!
Anyone else have any thoughts about this?
-
Pleasure. Shout if I can help!
-
Fantastic. Thank you very much. Interestingly this website is hosted on a different platform to our others, so I wonder whether this has something to do with the config. We'll set up 301s for w. and ww. as a short term fix and look at the config going forward.
Many thanks again.
-
Hey, I think I have spotted something:
Google this:
portland clic-clac sofa bed
& Closely Check the result:
http://ww.franceshunt.co.uk/live/sofa-beds/portland-clic-clac-sofa-bed.html
ww not www
Also, we have another version of that page indexed:
v 1.
info:ww.franceshunt.co.uk/live/sofa-beds/portland-clic-clac-sofa-bed.htmlv 2.
info:www.franceshunt.co.uk/live/sofa-beds/portland-clic-clac-sofa-bed.htmlSo, you have something whack going on with your sub domains.
Digging a bit deeper:
site:franceshunt.co.uk/live/sofa-beds/portland-clic-clac-sofa-bed.html
This shows that we have not only some ww. & www. results we also have pages being returned on
w.
ww.
www.
www.w.These are all the clic clac sofa bed pages so that most likely explains that one away and could well be at the root of your other problems.
I quickly checked the obvious and you do a 301 from franceshunt.co.uk to www.franceshunt.co.uk but if we do a general indexation query
site:franceshunt.co.uk
We see all kinds of weirdness and for the homepage alone (again, checking very quickly we have indexed and can resolve that page on
So.... not to hard to assume you may have lost a little bit of trust here through duplicate version of the page.
It obviously needs a bit more digging around but this should be easily fixed with a 301 for all these variations to www. and a double check across the board and on your internal linking to figure out just how this has happened and why it resolves on those wacky sub domains.
I didn't find a:
if-we-create-duplicate-versions-of-the-site-do-we-get-more-serp-share.franceshunt.co.uk but.... it resolves so it seems the site will resolve on any sub domain so we have two main issues
1. The virtual host is wrongly configured to allow it rank on anything.franceshunt.co.uk - a competitor could use this to harm you!
2. There are variations indexed that you need to take care of and a (*). rule for anything other than www. should 301 to the www. version of the page and that should, given a bit of time for reindexation etc, do the job (or at least help, who's to say we don't have multiple issues here).
Hope it helps and please let me know how it works out!
Marcus
-
First of all, thanks very much for taking the time to have a look for us and offer your opinions Marcus, much appreciated.
We are certainly going to be experimenting with the canonical tag in this way moving forward. We've never experienced problems with user interaction within the site since Google decided to start ranking the "show all" version of the pages instead so we've never really worried too much about it until now.
The worst hit was another non-competitive term "clic clac sofa bed" - we grew it steadily from 10th position back in feb and this was 3rd last week (!) and is no longer ranking at all! The page that was ranking is: http://www.franceshunt.co.uk/live/sofa-beds/
When this campaign began back in the old days of yore we were still using free directorys for optimisation of deep pages. Ive read alot about these being slowly de-indexed by Google so was wondering if this was having an adverse impact on some of the "weaker" pages. As you can see though there has been no off-site optmisation towards this page its a pretty new term (only added to campaign in feb) so im discounting that theory - for now!
-
Hey
First up, you have rel = next & prev on the paginated pages so that's good but I would also use the rel=canonical to the view all page as described here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html
The view all page in this category is not huge and loads nice and quickly so I cant see any reason not to 'help' google and give them the indication that this is where you want all rankings for those pages to be concentrated.
As always, experimentation is needed but I see things like this:
-
You have a view all page and that is the desired page to display and Google prefers it all by itself
-
You have a rel=next & rel=prev set up that is really for when you want to display individual component pages rather than the main page
-
The search query you are referencing has no intent that makes it more specific to one of the paginated pages so the ideal landing page is the view all page
So, remove the rel=next & rel=prev and canonical it to the view all page and see how you get on. Allow it to reindex, record the results and make an decision based on that information.
As a disclaimer, this may not make any difference with the ranking as it seems they are not indexing your paginated pages AND if we do an info query on the main category page it shows details for the show all page. That said, this is the correct way to do it unless you would rather show the individual pages so I would still make the change.
I think when it comes down to it, Harveys just have like 5 x as many linking domains as you and you both have fairly natural looking anchor text (at the most cursory of views) so they are just outranking you here. I have not digged into the other results between you and them and a drop from 3 to 11 is a bit more than the usual flutters - is there anything else that has had a similar drop?
-
-
Thanks Marcus!
Our site is http://www.franceshunt.co.uk/
We have asked a couple of questions before on Moz as to how best to solve the pagination issues within our site.
Google seems to prefer to rank the "show all" version of the targeted landing pages.
So whilst we are optimising http://www.franceshunt.co.uk/dine/extending-dining-tables/
Google prefers to rank http://www.franceshunt.co.uk/dine/extending-dining-tables/?p=all
Which hasn't caused us any problems before, yet now im wondering if this could be part of the issue too. Please let us know what you think!
-
We were ranking third before the update for this term.
Surely brand exposure and social signals are related to their number one positioning, but whats with the second result?
This is the same landing page yet through a different navigational path. This is what im questioning here?
-
Hmmm, yeah, that kind of sucks. That is the same page, and like you say it just seems to be either tagged as either living room or dining room. Looking at them closely, they are vaguely different, not a lot in it, both just a weak category page.
Whilst this is an obvious example of something amiss here, they should not have the top two spots, I would not waste too much time worrying about it. I imagine this will be a short lived deal for them.
Can you drop a link to your site? Maybe we can better advise you on what you can control so you can try to win back some footing here?
-
The update went in favour of companies with good brand exposure, so it is possible that Harvey's link profile is a mix of brand and keyword anchor text.
Your also notice they have 9,000+ facebook fans, in order to obtain that they must activity work on social media, so your also looking at social signals being built another thing Google is now focusing on.
But I don't really see that keyword being that competitive, you should be able to push through SERP's
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Why did Google Index a weird version of my blog post?
i wrote a page - https://domain.com/how-to-do-xyz/ but when doing an inurl search, i see that it is indexed by google as - https://secureservercdn.net/58584.883848.9834983/myftpupload/how-to-do-xyz/ (not actual url) and when i view that page, it is a weirdly formatted version of the page with many design elements missing. this is a wordpress site. Why would this be? thanks, Ryan
Web Design | | RyanMeighan0 -
Google text-only vs rendered (index and ranking)
Hello, can someone please help answer a question about missing elements from Google's text-only cached version.
Web Design | | cpawsgo
When using JavaScript to display an element which is initially styled with display:none, does Google index (and most importantly properly rank) the elements contents? Using Google's "cache:" prefix followed by our pages url we can see the rendered cached page. The contents of the element in question are viewable and you can read the information inside. However, if you click the "Text-only version" link on the top-right of Google’s cached page, the element is missing and cannot be seen. The reason for this is because the element is initially styled with display:none and then JavaScript is used to display the text once some logic is applied. Doing a long-tail Google search for a few sentences from inside the element does find the page in the results, but I am not certain that is it being cached and ranked optimally... would updating the logic so that all the contents are not made visible by JavaScript improve our ranking or can we assume that since Google does return the page in its results that everything is proper? Thank you!0 -
Website Drops Some Traffic after Redesign. What's Happening?
What it is NOT: No Link was broken. I have used Moz, Screaming Frog, Excel, etc - there are not broken links. We have not added spammy links. We kept the same amount of links and content on the homepage - with an exception of 1 or 2. All the pages remained canonical. Our blog uses rel=prev rel=next, and each page is canonicalized to itself. We do not index duplicated content. Our tags are content="noindex,follow" We are using the Genesis Framework (we were not before.) Load time is quicker - we now have a dedicated server. Webmaster tools has not reported any crawl report problems. What we did that should have improved our rankings and traffic: Implemented schema.org Responsive design Our bounce rate is down - Average visit length is up. Any ideas?
Web Design | | Thriveworks-Counseling0 -
Will google penalize a website for using a table layout?
I just got a new client today and his entire website layout and structure is using tables instead of divs. This client is on a tight budget and wants to avoid unnecessary hours for re-coding the website, but at the same time he wants me to improve his SEO organically. This is the first time I've been asked to do work on an existing website that uses pure tables for the entire layout and I'm wondering if this effects the SEO in any way. So my question is, will tables effect rankings and SEO in any way?
Web Design | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
META Description Not Showing Up On Google
Hi, I have noticed recently that for my highest ranking keyword on Google United Kingdom, the meta description (that has not changed for several months and always used to be displayed when someone searched for this keyword) now only shows the first couple of words. Also, instead of the rest of the Meta Description there is a list of items that I offer for sale all squashed together with their individual prices. I am the only company on page one of Google who's impression looks like this and I think it looks really unprofessional. Why has this happened and how do I change it? Any help is much appreciated
Web Design | | g3mmab0 -
IP block in Google
Our office has a number of people performing analysis and research on keyword positions, volume, competition etc. We have 1 external static IP address. We installed the static IP so we can filter out our visits in Google Analytics. However by 10 AM we get impssible CAPTCHA's or even get blocked in Google. Do you have any experience with such an issue? Any solutions you can recommend? Any help would be appreciated! SXI5A.png
Web Design | | Partouter0