Suspended YouTube account causing havoc in ranking and traffic
-
Hi SEOmoz community
This is my first question in the forum and I'd prefer it was more on the constructive side rather than introducing an issue on my website. I hope someone can still shed a light on the issue.
Just over a week ago, YouTube has suspended my account for what I would call dubious reasons. Suspending my account meant lots of dead videos on my site and potentially other people's sites, who embedded my videos. I have only recently managed to take down all references to my blocked YouTube account (off my site).
Now here it comes, literally since that week my traffic numbers have dropped below half of what it used to be and less. I hardly have any more organic search entries and my keywords have plummeted (in some cases 20 - 30 positions). Keywords, that ranked well are currently not searched via my site at all. I am not 100% what is going on and doing my reading on the side, but I am starting to get a little paranoid over a potential Google penalty that may have been issued to my site.
Maybe someone has experienced similar issues or simply knows the answer. Someone suggested that due to the 'Trust' that YouTube has passed on to my site is now gone, it caused this massive drop. However, it still makes me think, is an element such as various YouTube videos on your site such a big thing that makes and breaks a site??
I appreciate your input on the issue. Many thanks everybody!!
-
Thanks for your answer Ryan
I understand the point you're making about the duplicate anchor text back links and will look into this. It's still ironic that the problems surfaced once the issue with the YouTube account set in. I'll see how to turn the rudder.
Thanks again
-
One of the first things I notice is the site's backlink profile is incredibly spammy. Google has issued many manual penalties for sites with similar backlink profiles. About 40% of your links show "Online Casino" as the anchor text.
Penguin is an algorithm update designed to target spammy profiles such as yours. It seems highly likely your rankings are being suppressed either manually or algorithmically due to manipulative links. Those links are a clear, black hat tactic.
-
"If Google took action against your YouTube account, they may have taken action against your website for the same reason."
My thoughts exactly. Someone may have reported or Google may have discovered something on the site, and the YouTube account may have just been a tentacle. As Ryan suggestions, can you provide more information?
Best,
Christopher -
Hello Hermski,
First let me share I have never had a YouTube account suspended nor worked with a client in that situation. Accordingly, my advice is more generic in nature.
Why exactly was your YouTube account suspended? I share your concern that your site may have been penalized. If Google took action against your YouTube account, they may have taken action against your website for the same reason.
I do not believe in the "trust" logic you suggested being shared from YouTube. According to your inquiry, your site suffered a "massive drop" in traffic. Assuming you did not make a change on your site such as blocking the site with the robots.txt file, the logical conclusion is your rankings are being suppressed by Google.
Without your site's address or any other information, we can only take wild guesses as to the cause. We require more information to be helpful.
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
-
Drop in Rankings
Hello Webmasters, My site has incurred a sudden dip in rankings across sections. We conducted an analysis and have observed the following two major issues: Unnatural Links Penalty: Our site was issued an Unnatural Links Penalty on May 23. Basically, we have both 'http' and 'https' versions of our website registered on Webmaster tools. Initially, the warning showed up on the 'http' version and thus we started a cleanup by extracting the linking domains and have also filed a reconsideration request once all the spammy domains were removed and rightly disavowed. Recently, we got another manual action warning on the 'https' version regarding the unnatural links. So we have started with the cleanup activity right away. While analyzing this issue, we came across another major problem regarding the two versions which is our next concern and is mentioned below. https Canonical Issue: For more insights, we went through our site’s content and found that our website is following the below pattern Our 'http' version of the webpages get 301 redirected to the 'https' version. This 'https' version again has a canonical pointing to the 'http' version thus creating a loop. To conclude, I request your valuable learnings and thoughts on the following: Which of these issues are likely to have affected our website’s ranking Which version is likely to be preferred by Google (https or http) in our case
Technical SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
How do we maintain keyword rankings when creating a domain?
We are creating a new corporate "marketing site" on Hubspot and connecting our existing product site to that as a sub-domain. Our existing site ranks very well for all of our targeted keywords. The existing product site will now be behind a login, so how do we transfer juice to the new site in Hubspot? Or can we?
Technical SEO | | Reis_Inc.0 -
Are bad links the reason for not ranking?
Hello Moz community. I'm looking here for some input from the experts on what could be wrong with a site I'm working on. The site is in Spanish, but I'm sure you'll get the idea. We want to rank the site first page on Google Mexico (www.google.com.mx) for the keyword "refacciones Audi" and some other brands (refacciones = replacement parts would probably be a good translation, just FYI). Now, our page hasn't been completely optimized, so in my mind it's OK not to be on first page yet. However, our main competitor is ranking first page for all the keywords we want to rank for, but when you check their site, you'll find there is hardly any content, no keywords are being used in their content, all pages have the exact same title and meta description, their catalog is in a completely different domain. In short, no SEO whatsoever. Looking at Moz data, our site has a DA of 26, while our competitor's has a 10. They have no external backlinks at all, while we have a few hundred. This leaves me scratching my head: how can a completely non-optimized site outrank us? I decided to check our backlink profile, and a previous SEO agency seems to have built MANY fake blogs with lots of backlinks with rich anchor text. Quite a big percentage of our backlinks are of this kind, so this is the only thing I can think can be affecting our ranking. Will disavowing be our solution? If you'd like to check, our site is: www.refaccionariaalemana.com.mx Our competitors' is: www.saferefacciones.com ANY help will be extremely appreciated as I feel a bit lost. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EduardoRuiz1 -
Rankings for Google Play Pages
Hey all, I'm relatively new here and certainly new to posting in the forums and interacting with the community but I hope to be much more active in the coming months. I have what might be a silly question regarding search results for a Google Play store-specific query. The company in question has their main North American app that's been out for a month and a half and then an International version that was released just a few days ago. If you run a Google search (NOT a search witin Google Play) for 'Google Play Company Name' the more recent (but less used and ultimately less important, at least for the time being) International app is higher in the SERP than the more used and reviewed North American app. I'm guessing that this is something that will correct itself over the next week as the North American app establishes itself as the more important of the two, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask just in case there's something they can do to affect the results a little quicker. Any advice, input or just a verification of my guess would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
Sites Copying my Content Ranking Higher
A number of sites are copying - either 100% word for word, paragraphs, or sentences of my content and are ranking higher. Some sites are doing this with permission/properly and are linking back to my article Others are not linking back or giving credit. Some of these sites, in some cases are ranking higher than me in Google results. What can I do?
Technical SEO | | ben10000 -
How can i increase my website traffic
Hello, my boss has decide a build website we have more than 12500 products in ourwebsite its mtscellular.com, im new as seo but im confused and need help i want to know how somebody help me to increase my website traffic
Technical SEO | | jimmylora0 -
I think my ranking report is not accurate.
I think my ranking are not accurate... It says this but it think it is fault. Under here i put what it says. Is it possible that i get the wrong results? The site is www.mando-control.es And an other questions is : when people in spain search do they automaticly search on google.es or google.com ? | Mando a distancia
Technical SEO | | seoroyal
| Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| Mando distancia | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 2 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| Mandos a distancia | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| mandos distancia | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| mandos distancias Keyword History Ranking Analysis | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces | | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| Mando distancia | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 2 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| Mandos a distancia | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| mandos distancia | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |
| mandos distancias Keyword History Ranking Analysis | pending | Moved unknown 0 spaces | 1 | Moved unknown 0 spaces |0 -
Tracking twitter traffic in Google Analytics
I would like to track twitter traffic to my account in GA. After going through the step in the help tutorial about how to do it, I managed to generate this url ( with the help of url builder ) http://twitter.com/UltraSEO?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social%2BMedia&utm_campaign=Ultraseo Now what should i do next ? Please help. How can i track visits to my twitter profile ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050