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
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
-
Site dropped from SERP
Hello, I've been ranking a site for the last 5 months with good success, ranking on the first page for a high traffic keyword. In the beginning of September however, my site completely dropped out of the SERPs for several of those keywords yet my site was still indexed and there was no penalty applied to my site via search console. I would assume this maybe because of the update during the time.My site came back again a week later and it was ranking much higher on the first page (#2). Today, I just checked the SERPs and my site is now gone again. It was there this morning but now as of two hours ago it is gone, as well as one of my main competitors. My site is still indexed and no penalties via search console. Does anyone know what causes these types of issues? Im assuming my site will come back in a week or so with hopefully the same or better ranking, but when I have disruptions like this it really hurts my organic traffic. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KathleenDC0 -
Sudden traffic down after mobile site
Hi to all. I have a huge problem about my web site traffic. We published our mobile site version under mobile domain in m.etilercerrental.com. And we published mobile site sitemap under main site such as sitemap-mobile.xml and notify google from webmaster tools. After a while whole site traffic gone down so badly. Almost 60% gone down which doesnt make sense. Mobile sitemap is hosted under desktop site. And we didnt add any link to switch sites between mobile and desktop version. We automaticly redirect between desktop and mobile versiyons by detecting useragent. One another this is we have announcement section in dekstop version but we dont have it in mobile. But we are not making any redirection to mobile site when user visits the announcement section even by mobile phone. Because we are not displaying it in mobile version.
Technical SEO | | gkhnrtk
One last this is we are making redirections automatically and not asking user preference such as showing a link in the bottom of page to switch sites betwenn mobile and pc version. While developing mobile site we followed instructions in this https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/?hl=tr For find the details I would like to give you some site urls. Site Url : http://www.etilercarrental.com/
Sitemap Xml : http://www.etilercarrental.com/sitemap.xml
Mobile Sitemap Xml : http://www.etilercarrental.com/sitemap-mobile.xml0 -
Changing .nl to .eu impact on rankings?
Hi all, I have 2 questions concerning the merge of two websites of ours.
Technical SEO | | MarikeP
We would like to combine our .nl and .be website to one big .eu website. Both websites have dutch and english rankings in The Netherlands and Belgium. 1. Will the rankings change because of the domain change to .eu?
2. Will the rankings in both countries change because of the merge? I hope somebody can help me, Greetings0 -
Bug in Competitor Rankings Report?
I am looking at the report called: Rankings Report for [Competitor XXX] For all keywords in the report, the rankings on the main page say "Not in Top 50"... however when I drill down I can see that this is not true... there is a graph with valid rankings which were gathered as recently as March 20, 2013 (2 days ago) is this a known bug? Regards Jim Donovan
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Dropped to 45th spot. How to track ?
Hi.. We specialize in CMS Development and all of our keywords were spotted on 1st page always. Most of them were on #1 only. ON a weekly basis, we only post resourceful blog posts on our website . Since 2-3 months, I have seen quite some drop in traffic and today when I tried the rank status, I see the keywords have dropped to 4th or 5th page. Is there a way, I can track, what went wrong ? Where to start with ? The site always ranked good since 2 years of its start already.
Technical SEO | | mageclub0 -
Why is this site ranking so good?
Site in question: http://bit.ly/aBvVbm Our main competitor in the UK seems to be ranking extremely good for the keyword "jigsaw puzzles" even though their linking profile doesn't seem all that great? They mainly have site-wide links on 2 of their other ecommerce sites which seem to be given them their ranking power as this equals to 100's of links. Does sitewide links on 2 sites really give this much ranking power or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | Tonyy30 -
Traffic drop
Hi All, My site www.gunshotdigital.com has been losing traffic since the last month. I have no actual reason as to why this may be, I have not changed anything on the site either so I am totally baffeled. Can one of you awesome experts pl let me know why this may be? Thank you so much in advance, www.gunshotdigital.com Vijay
Technical SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
Front page dropped to PR1 - thoughts?
The front page of our site dropped in late March from PR4 to PR1. Yes, I know toolbar PR isn't terribly reliable, isn't much of an indicator of overall SEO, etc. - however, upper management will want to know what happened and what is being done to fix it. Of course, the answer is obvious: go build links. But what might the cause be? As I mentioned in a past Q&A, the site is entirely encrypted and as a result may be causing us to leak some juice (http backlinks of course make up the vast majority of our links). We're planning to fix this once the site is ported over to a CMS, but that's still months off. Other than that, what might be the problem? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0