Pages Disappearing from Search
-
Hi,
We have had a strongly ranking site since 2004. Over the past couple of days, our Google traffic has dropped by around 20% and some of our strong pages are completely disappearing from the rankings. They are still indexed, but having ranked number 1 are nowhere to be found. A number of pages still remain intact, but it seems they are increasingly disappearing.
Where should we start to try and find out what is happening?
Thanks
-
I would also check Search Console to see if Google is reporting a lot of 404s. Maybe your site has been down some. Also check your robots.txt and also your site for any noindex or rouge canonical links.
The basic approach here is to look first at any technical items. Is your web server or code is acting in such a way that Google cannot crawl your site or giving a signal that your pages are faulty or giving a directive to deindex them. You do this as it is the simplest thing to check and the easiest thing to fix. Did you have a major site change, etc.
After that, you check your rankings data and your organic traffic data to look for any patterns. Is this to the whole site, is it to specific pages. This may give clues of what is going on. Did it only change from Google and not from another source.
You then look at external factors. Did you lose good links? Did you gain bad links? Did a competitor or two come in and outrank you? Do these traffic changes correspond with a known Google update?
Good luck!
-
Hi,
First Check Google search console for any message from Google about any issue. If there are no message please check for which keywords ranking goes down or disappear ranking. Check anchor text for all the URL whose ranking Goes down.
over optimization of anchor text could also be reason if no message in Google search console. I'm just speculating because these could be the reason.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
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
-
How does this company rank this page?
If you Google the keyword "used iPhone 5," the URL ranking #1 in the SERP is the following: http://buy.gazelle.com/buy-used-iphone-5/ This page has zero content on it and a button on it that takes you to a category page with the iPhone 5 pre selected. My question is **how does this page outrank the sites products pages? **I ran a backlink analysis and don't see any links pointing to that URL. Also, **how does this site deal with its duplicate content issues? **If you look at the following URLs, you'll see a bunch of duplicate content in the "Key Features" section below the fold. http://buy.gazelle.com/buy/used/iphone-5-16gb-at-t http://buy.gazelle.com/buy/used/iphone-5-16gb-sprint If you think about it, this site will have different product pages for each variations of cellphone carrier and cellphone storage capacity. So for an iPhone 5, they will have 15 pages! Any insight into this would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cody_West0 -
Im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, because I rank 7-12 in search results
Hi All, Pls check the below url http://www.powerwale.com/inverter-battery for inverter battery keyword in google.co.in im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, and also I still rank in between 7 to 12 in search results.. How can be in Top 3 search results.. Pls suggest.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1191 -
How I can improve my website On page and Off page
My Website is guitarcontrol.com, I have very strong competition in market. Please advice me the list of improvements on my websites. In regarding ON page, Linkbuiding and Social media. What I can do to improve my website ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zoe.wilson170 -
HELP! How do I get Google to value one page over another (older) page that is ranking?
So I have a tactical question and I need mozzers. I'll use widgets as an example: 1- My company used to sell widgets exclusively and we built thousands of useful, branded unique pages that sell widgets. We have thousands of pages that are ranking for widgets.com/brand-widgets-for-sale. (These pages have been live for almost 2 years) 2- We've shifted our focus to now renting widgets. We have about 100 pages focused on renting the same branded widgets. These pages have unique content and photos and can be found at widgets.com/brand-widgets-for-rent. (These pages have been live for about 2-3 months) The problem is that when someone searches just for the brand name, the "for sale" pages dramatically outrank the "for rent" pages. Instead, I want them to find the "for rent" page. I don't want to redirect traffic from the "for sale" pages because someone might still be interested in buying (although as a company, we are super focused on renting). Solutions? "nofollow" the "for sale" pages with the idea that Google will stop indexing "for sale" and start valuing "for rent" over it? Remove "for sale" from sitemap. Help!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vacatia_SEO0 -
Page not appearing in SERPs
I have a regional site that does fairly well for most towns in the area (top 10-20). However, one place that has always done OK and has great content is not anywhere within the first 200. Everything looks OK, canonical link is correct, I can find the page if I search for exact text, there aren't any higher ranking duplicate pages. Any ideas what may have happened and how I can confirm a penalty for example. TIA,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornwall
Chris0 -
Google cached pages and search terms
Here's something I noticed. We have a rank A page and it's ranking 10 on Google search results. When I hover my mouse over our search result, Google gives us a preview, but Google also highlights in red where the search keyword is present on the page. Reviewing our page, even though we have it as the h1 header and intro paragraph, Google is highlighting it half way down the page. Any ideas why? I review rank 1 - 5 and Google highlights the keyword on the intro paragraph and h1 header Have you guys experienced anything like this? It makes me think..Google could be crawling my site and thinking I haven't got it in the h1 or intro paragraph etc.. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Page Authority Issue
My home page http://www.musicliveuk.com has a domain authority of 42 and page authority of 52. However I have set up other pages on the site to optimise for one keyword per page as I thought this was best practice. For example http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-bands targets 'wedding band' but this has a page authority of 24 way below my competitors. Having used the keyword difficulty tool on here it appears that is why I am struggling to rank highly (number 9). This is the same problem for several of my main keywords. I am building links to this and other pages in order to increase their authority and eventually rank highly but am I not better off optimising my home page that already has a good page authority and would probably out rank my competitors? Or am I missing something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/ Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied. Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640