Google update this wknd or page title issue?
-
Hi,
I've seen a big ranking drop for many major terms, for a particular site, just on Google. This happened Fri 20th or Sat 21st just gone. I don't see any news on an algorithm update over the weekend.I had changed many of the sites major page title protocols 2 weeks ago but a) I would have expected any negative effect before now and not all at once b) the protocols were carefully crafted to avoid traffic drops for major terms and c) i'm seeing traffic drops for keywords that still start at the beginning of the page title d) im seeing drops for some pages which are still using the OLD page titles. I had even tested the protocol on a number of pages in advance to ensure it wouldn't cause problems. As a bit of background - the title protocols were changed to make them more user friendly and less keyword heavy. CTR from search improved so was hoping for better not worse rankings!
Ideas, gratefully appreciated.Andy
-
This is what so frustrating, ridiculous and weird is - Google doesn't really know what exactly going on in their system. Thanks to multi-layered project management, machine learning etc.
-
Apparently there has been quite a bit of activity, but according to a post from Barry Schwartz there has been no update from Google. - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-no-21225.html
However the Moz metrics and others all pointed to something happening. I would suggest monitoring all yours sites closely for the time being.
Knowing Google they probably did do something!
Alternatively, I suppose the changes could also be tied to the timeframe in which yours sites have been crawled by Google, as such some of your changes could also have had an impact.
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
-
Google webcache of product page redirects back to product page
Hi all– I've legitimately never seen this before, in any circumstance. I just went to check the google webcache of a product page on our site (was just grabbing the last indexation date) and was immediately redirected away from google's cached version BACK to the site's standard product page. I ran a status check on the product page itself and it was 200, then ran a status check on the webcache version and sure enough, it registered as redirected. It looks like this is happening for ALL indexed product pages across the site (several thousand), and though organic traffic has not been affected it is starting to worry me a little bit. Has anyone ever encountered this situation before? Why would a google webcache possibly have any reason to redirect? Is there anything to be done on our side? Thanks as always for the help and opinions, y'all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TukTown1 -
2 Title elements on a single page
Hi there. I am looking at a site that currently has 2 <title>elements present on every page through out the site. They have a main Title with appropriate optimization. Then they have another <title> that appears to be empty. It looks like this; <span class="html-tag"><title></span><span class="html-tag"></title> I know having 2 <title>elements is not ideal. But if the second one is empty, can it still have a negative affect? </p> <p>Thanks</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ciceron_main0 -
Suspected hacking - Google has detected that some of your pages may contain hidden text or cloaking
I got below message from google, But I did not see any hidden text, Please check it. http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/: Suspected hacking Google has detected that some of your pages may contain hidden text or cloaking, techniques that are outside our Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, we detected that your site may have been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index. Sample URLs: http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/ http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/about-us/ http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/achievements/ Recommended action Clean up the hacked content so that your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Page titles, Keyword rich or single keyword?
Hi Everybody, My previous SEO company had set the page titles like : keyword | keyword | keyword | keyword | keyword | keyword | keyword | My new one is changing every thing and replacing them with sentences including one or two keywords in each one. Could you please let me know which one is better approach? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Best practice for the brand name in Page Titles
We are considering changing the way we treat our brand (TTS) in our page title tags. In MOZ I found the following advice: Optimal Format Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TTS_Group
or
Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword Are these of equal merit or is the former (Primary keyword | Brand) the better route? Currently we use the second version - 'Brand | Primary Keyword' - but we are proposing to shift to 'Primary Keyword | Brand'. We currently get an awful lot of brand traffic that converts very well so I need to be sure that no harm is done as a minimum. All views appreciated. Many thanks. Jon0 -
How to make Google include our recipe pages in its main index?
We have developed a recipe search engine www.edamam.com and serve the content of over 500+ food bloggers and major recipe websites. Our legal obligations do not allow us to show the actual recipe preparation info (e.g. the most valuable from the content), we can only show a few images, the ingredients and nutrition information. Most of the unique content goes to the source/blog. By submitting XML sitemaps on GWT we now have around 500K pages indexed, however only a few hundred appear in Google's main index and we are looking for a solution to include all of them in the index. Also good to know is that it appears that all our top competitors are in the exactly same situation, so it is a challenging question. Any ideas will be highly appreciated! Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edamam0 -
Why is this page not being delivered for Google search result?
Hey folks, Figured I would try to get an experts insight on this. On google search result for BLACK TITANIUM RINGS + TITANIUM-JEWELRY.COM the page that I "think" should show up is this one: http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/black-titanium-rings.html However, it does not. Imho, this page is highly relevant. I used Rank Tracker here on seomoz.org and the page is not even in top 50 of search engine results for google. Our 'About Black Titanium Rings' page ranks #2 (http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/about-black-titanium.html) but the /black-titanium-rings.html page doesn't even rank. Any suggestions on what I could look at to figure out why this page is being penalized? We are not under a manual penalty (anymore!). Thanks! Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0