Webpage has bombed outside of Top 50 for search term in one week. What's the cause?
-
I've been monitoring the performance of some pages via the email Moz sends every week, and until this week two pages that I've managed to get ranking have ranked between 20 and 23 for the specific term. However, today on the email one of the pages for one search term has bombed out of the top 50 while the other page has remained unaffected.
What could be the cause for this? I've looked at Google Webmasters for an indication of a penalty of some sort but there is nothing glaringly obvious. I've no messages on there, and I haven't bought a load of spam links at all.
What else could I check?
-
"two pages that I've managed to get ranking have ranked between 20 and 23 for the specific term. However, today on the email one of the pages for one search term has bombed out of the top 50 while the other page has remained unaffected."
Sometimes, if you have two pages that are ranking for the same search query it's not uncommon for Google to decide that only one of the pages needs to be presented to the user. If both are serving the same user intent then essentially Google may consider it (semantically) duplicate content, despite the fact that both pages may be worded differently, etc.
From my experience of having multiple pages ranking for the same keyword, the pages will keep battling it out in the SERPs bouncing up and down. One week, there'll be a cluster of 3 ranking terribly. The next week one will shoot up, while the other is nowhere to be seen. Personally I've found that Google seems to prefer it if there's only one page ranking for the term (it's an easier decision for Google to make and it won't get so confused which one to rank as more relevant to the query). By merging similar pages, I find that it ends up being stronger in Google as it's not having to compete in the SERPs with similar pages on your website.
I hope that helps at all, even if it's only from anecdotal evidence.
-
Hi Mick,
The first thing to do is always verify the ranking change. Open up an incognito window in Chrome, search the term and see if it has dropped there as well. Google fluctuates quite a bit and sometimes ranking shifts are ephemeral and will return.
Second, we do find that there is far more fluctuation beyond page 1. Whether this is due to cruder metrics, lack of stabilization by engagement metrics, etc. is unknown, but what is certain is that greater fluctuation seems occur the deeper you get in the search results. I would not be highly concerned with this rankings loss at face value.
However, there are some things you can check.
- Have you lost any links pointing to this page recently
- Have you made any substantive changes to the site, such as internal link structure
- Have you introduced alternate content on your site that may now outrank this page
These are just a couple of the first steps you can look at.
Good luck!
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
-
After hack and remediation, thousands of URL's still appearing as 'Valid' in google search console. How to remedy?
I'm working on a site that was hacked in March 2019 and in the process, nearly 900,000 spam links were generated and indexed. After remediation of the hack in April 2019, the spammy URLs began dropping out of the index until last week, when Search Console showed around 8,000 as "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" but listed as "Valid" in the coverage report and many of them are still hack-related URLs that are listed as being indexed in March 2019, despite the fact that clicking on them leads to a 404. As of this Saturday, the number jumped up to 18,000, but I have no way of finding out using the search console reports why the jump happened or what are the new URLs that were added, the only sort mechanism is last crawled and they don't show up there. How long can I expect it to take for these remaining urls to also be removed from the index? Is there any way to expedite the process? I've submitted a 'new' sitemap several times, which (so far) has not helped. Is there any way to see inside the new GSC view why/how the number of valid URLs in the indexed doubled over one weekend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rickyporco0 -
What's the best redirect to use for a newer version of a blog post?
For example: suppose you have a post "The Best Games to Play for YouTube Gamers in 2016" and you want to make this a yearly series. Should you 301 the 2016 version to the new 2017 one? Should you use the canonical attribute? If 2016 isn't in the URL, should you make the 2017 one the new URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Search Causing Duplicate Content
I use Opencart and have found that a lot of my duplicate content (mainly from Products) which is caused by the Search function. Is there a simple way to tell Google to ignore the Search function pathway? Or is this particular action not recommended? Here are two examples: http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=product/search&tag=cloth http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=product/search
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Site's pages has GA codes based on Tag Manager but in Screaming Frog, it is not recognized
Using Tag Assistant (Google Chrome add-on), we have found that the site's pages has GA codes. (also see screenshot 1) However, when we used Screaming Frog's filter feature -- Configuration > Custom > Search > Contain/Does Not Contain, (see screenshot 2) SF is displaying several URLs (maybe all) of the site under 'Does Not Contain' which means that in SF's crawl, the site's pages has no GA code. (see screenshot 3) What could be the problem why SF states that there is no GA code in the site's pages when in fact, there are codes based on Tag Assistant/Manager? Please give us steps/ways on how to fix this issue. Thanks! SgTovPf VQNOJMF RCtBibP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help
Hello, So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index. One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs. This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it. We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it. However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed. Why? Maybe there's something we're missing here. Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively. Has anyone else ran into this problem? The path we used to implement this action:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbake
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
Why isn't my uneven link flow among index pages causing uneven search traffic?
I'm working with a site that has millions of pages. The link flow through index pages is atrocious, such that for the letter A (for example) the index page A/1.html has a page authority of 25 and the next pages drop until A/70.html (the last index page listing pages that start with A) has a page authority of just 1. However, the pages linked to from the low page authority index pages (that is, the pages whose second letter is at the end of the alphabet) get just as much traffic as the pages linked to from A/1.html (the pages whose second letter is A or B). The site gets a lot of traffic and has a lot of pages, so this is not just a statistical biip. The evidence is overwhelming that the pages from the low authority index pages are getting just as much traffic as those getting traffic from the high authority index pages. Why is this? Should I "fix" the bad link flow problem if traffic patterns indicate there's no problem? Is this hurting me in some other way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GilReich0 -
Google fluctuates its result on Chrome's private browsing
I have seen an interesting Google behaviour this morning. As usual, I would open Chrome's private browsing to see how a keyword is ranking. This was what I see... Typed in "sell my car", I see Auto Trader page on 3rd. (Ref:Sell My Car 1st result img) Googled something else, then re-Googled "sell my car" and saw that our page went to 2nd! I repeated the same process and saw that we went from 3rd to 2nd again. Has Google results gone mental? PaGXJ.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tmg.seo0 -
What's a good place for a copywriter to start researching the more technical aspects of SEO?
I've been working as a copywriter for about a year and a half now and I feel like the more advanced SEO topics (rel= tags, .htaccess files, etc) are a bit over my head. Is there a website where I can read up on all of these things? I have a basic understanding of them but I couldn't talk about them for very long, and I want to become more well rounded as a search marketer. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nxmassa0