Great Googly Moogly!!

[Yayagogo]

Hello WPW Community,

Since yesterday afternoon, I am experiencing the most alarming situation with Google. It seems that our entire site (directory) has dropped off the face of the earth. PR to homepage/internal pages remain the same, and all pages remain indexed within G.

The problem is that EVERY page now appears in the hundreds for their KW's, instead of the top 10, where they have been for years. If our homepage (decidio.com) comes up listed as #124 when searching for 'Decidio' (the name of our company), you can all imagine what has happened to the thousands of inner pages in our site!

We are very well established in our field, and have thousands of incoming links (Google now reports only 100 for some reason). Of course, our traffic is currently 10% of normal volume because of this.

My question to the cyber-sleuths in this forum is: What could have happened? Everything was fine until yesterday, when....BAM!

Has this happened to anyone else recently? Can this be some type of penalty? No changes to any pages have been made in months. Any theories/advice are appreciated. Thank you.

[qbania]

"wager on football" search I've been #1-5 for last 6 months. Today Page 8.....and there's more? I don't know whats up. http://www.wageronfootball.com

[RichardS]

Sounds familiar, but I know what I did.
I have been jackin around with the website, renaming files, adding deleting. I went from #9 to #60 yesterday. So I did some looking and found that I had inadvertently not included allot of pages/content when I was retooling.
So It was a combination of lost content, renaming files, and the forces of evil and Satan himself working against me.
I threw on my super hero suite flew around the room three times, under and around the desk and set down and re-added the content. I will now wait to see if this fixes it. I have a couple of other top secret hush hush plans that I will try. All in all, live and most of all think before you leap.
At least my other sites are still doing well.

Cheers


RS

[Yayagogo]

Thanks for the initial replies, but I repeat: nothing on the site has been touched in months. Content is always being added by the professionals listed with us, but that should only ensure frequent visits by the G spider.

Also, it does not explain even our PR6 homepage appearing #124 in the listings for our the name of our own business (decidio).

Any thoughts, WPW? This is a tricky one!

[RichardS]

Originally Posted by Yayagogo

Content is always being added by the professionals listed with us.

I'm not sure what you mean.

RS

[Yayagogo]

What I mean is that businesses listed with us write about themselves (business profile), which is spidered by googlebot. New vendors are also always joining, adding their profiles to the site as well.

To my knowledge, the more content changes on a page, the more frequently googlebot visits that page, all other things being equal.

[cbp]

Google has just had a major shuffle/update - its still happening - I see WMW have given it the name 'Allegra' - some sites up a lot, some down...

CBP

[Yayagogo]

Interesting,CBP...thanks for the info. I will not panic for now and give it a few days to sort out, but being ranked #125 for our own business name is a bit hard to swallow....I still dont understand how that could happen to a PR6 with tons of incoming links.

[qbania]

Why is my signature not appearing right?

[braknews]

Originally Posted by qbania

Why is my signature not appearing right?

Instead of the HTML A HREF use BB code, for example:

Whatever

Will appear as Whatever

You do not need the target="_blank" as the BB code link does that.

[scallihan]

If you look at the source code of the page that is showing up #4 in Google for "Decidio", you'll notice he's got hidden URLs to your site embedded in his code:

<p class=MsoNormal>&lt;Script&gt; if(navigator.appName.indexOf('Netscape')==-1)
{<span style='mso-tab-count:1'> </span>document.write('&lt;DIV
ID=Pere_logo
STYLE=position:absolute;top:1px;right:1px;visibili ty:show;z-index:9&gt;');
document.write('&lt;A HREF=http://www.decidio.com/linkpage.asp?beno=29015
TARGET=_new &gt;&lt;IMG SRC=http://www.decidio.com/images/directorylink_corner.gif
ALT=www.decidio.com BORDER=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;'); document.write('&lt;/DIV&gt;'); }
else<span style='mso-tab-count:1'> </span>{<span
style='mso-tab-count:1'> </span>document.write('&lt;LAYER<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>NAME=Pere_logo top=1 visibility=hidden
ALIGN=right&gt;'); document.write('&lt;A HREF=http://www.decidio.com/linkpage.asp?beno=29015
TARGET=_new&gt;&lt;IMG
SRC=http://www.decidio.com/images/directorylink_corner.gif ALT=www.decidio.com
BORDER=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;'); <span style='mso-tab-count:1'> </span>document.write('&lt;/LAYER&gt;');

This looks at least very suspicious to me. You might want to demand he remove this hidden code (it is between the </head> end tag and the <body> start tag) from his page.

[scallihan]

Oops, also noticed looking at the code to your page (decidio.com) that you've got serious coding issues:

1) You've got ten blank lines at the top of your page, before the <html> tag.

2) About halfway through your page, the <html>, <head>, and <title> tags from the top of your page are repeated, as well as everything that follows them, including scripts, <body> tag, and the rest of the content of your page.

3) At the bottom of your page, you've got two sets of </body> and </html> end tags.

This might be why your site has collapsed in Google, in that it is sending a very big "bad quality" signal to Google. It doesn't have to be for something that you've done recently, but can be for something that happened months ago, but which Google is only catching up to now.

I'd get the code fixed on your front page pronto. If it is a "Web designer" who did this, he's got some explaining to do.

[scallihan]

Oops, just saw your Resources page (http://www.decidio.com/resources/), which is nothing but links to about 66 spam pages you've created. You, for instance, have separate pages for:

Las Vegas weddings • Las Vegas wedding chapels • Wedding in Las Vegas
Las Vegas wedding packages • wedding chapel in Las Vegas • Vegas weddings
Las Vegas wedding reception • Vegas wedding chapels

Goodbye.

[jpipes]

Oops, just saw your Resources page (http://www.decidio.com/resources/), which is nothing but links to about 66 spam pages you've created.

Yep. Seems pretty obvious to me why your rankings dropped. There's very little actual content on your site at all, other than series of redundant spam links, and, of course, the ubiquitous Google AdWords boxes.

Just because "your site pages haven't changed in months" doesn't mean Google can't catch on to the fact that you're just trying to trick out SE results for every single keyword combination using all-those-hyphenated-internal-pages...

But wait. I just saw from your info page that "Our objective is to architect, develop, and manage our online community marketplace in a way that surpasses any other search experience.". Uh, seems to me that your targeted search experience is, well, Google results.

[qbania]

Could you extend the same courtesy to me please and check my HTML. I've made a ton of modifications to the site in the last 6o days. Maybe I'm looking at something and not realizing it could be responsible for bringing my sites keywords to a nasty spot on google (not in top 10).

http://www.wageronfootball.com

I'm fairly new to dreamweaver and have been teaching myself on the fly for the last 5 months. The actual template and layout of site was made for me. i've just done the addon content and pages.

[charco]

Dunno where decidio is coming from but all I get is references to decidió (i.e. "he decided" en español)
Maybe I'me not searching correctly!
Can't find decidio (wedding etc) at all
Having said that the code on the decidio home page is indeed all to heck with multiple references and poor coding...

[freehits]

Originally Posted by jpipes

Yep. Seems pretty obvious to me why your rankings dropped. There's very little actual content on your site at all, other than series of redundant spam links, and, of course, the ubiquitous Google AdWords boxes.

Just because "your site pages haven't changed in months" doesn't mean Google can't catch on to the fact that you're just trying to trick out SE results for every single keyword combination using all-those-hyphenated-internal-pages...

But wait. I just saw from your info page that "Our objective is to architect, develop, and manage our online community marketplace in a way that surpasses any other search experience.". Uh, seems to me that your targeted search experience is, well, Google results.

Nothing like a flame for a first post, thats quite an impression. I have no love for these types of database site that just spit searches back at me so they can display ads, but if this is suddenly so awful that PR 6's will be dropping off the map, Then I welcome seeing ABOUT.com drop off the planet, as well as about 1 of every 10 sites on google.

I just got knocked off page one by all-links-site.com, that sounds like quality helpful content.

Google is a warm tub of sites scraping and spitting back results so they can display ads, and since google is up 101% this quarter from allowing it .....I dont see that being this sites issue.

I believe what cbp is referring to is the issue, my main watch term has gone from 6 to 9 to 11 to 16 in the last week, with the total returned results going 550k - 575k - 582k to 558k, clearly we are mid shuffle and I am not enjoying the ride.

I look forward to the viagra update when we all see our search positions rise.

I like Bill Gates more and more with every update.

PS - thats a nice catch scallihan on the code.

[Imaster]

Current Scenario:
The same thing is happening to one of my 4 year old authority whitehat site which until today was ranking tremendously high. Now when I type the site name, i see only the main page placed at around 15th position (was 1st before with a cluster) and on the second page I see a cluster with "More Results from this site" for this same site. [My settings are 100 results per page]. I also tried checking several of my top keywords and they all have gone very down in the serps. Even when I type in the exact title of my home page with the sitename, its 5th. Has it been sandboxed?

This site is a sub-domain of my main site. All other sub-domains are perfectly fine and not much changes. Each sub-domains have tons of good backlinks.

Past Scenario:

One of my other site (not one of above) started appearing way down for the site name a few months back during some update. Now it has started appearing higher than before. It was 30th previously. Now it is around 5th. It always used to be 1st before that update a few months back.

My site is an information site with alexa ranking of around 4000. Its not spammy at all, FYI.

[cbp]

Welcome to WPW...

Has it been sandboxed?

No. Sandbox is only applied to new sites.

CBP

[jimmie1_us]

I am sure this is alarming to you and I have seen many with this dilemma. My answer unfortunately has to be a question. Have you done any analysis at all on your index page? Or have you analyzed your pages in question? If you have, did it give you any clues? If you have enjoyed good listing and ranking for so many years there is really no explanation.

If your rank has dropped it is a indication of your site simply being bumped. And to be down to 124 it is a major bump. Over 100 sites pushing yours out of the way. Investigate those sites. That is where the change has occurred. They are the one to make changes. They saw you at the top. They saw you as competition. They either mimicked or grabbed your keywords and or key phrases. Incorporated them in their sites. Resubmitted and bam!! Bumped you! Keeping a eye on the competition in the rankings is very important.

Also may I suggest you back track. Think back to the beginning.Go back in thought on all the things you did to get to the top in the search engines. Then re evaluate. Doing this may give you a clue or at least something that my have changed that you have missed.

I am a new freelance SEO specialist in training, and this is interesting to me. So I will follow this thread.

I am also willing to invest some time in helping you if you wish at no cost.

I have acquired some of the best high end search engine positioning software on the web. Right now I am in a learning curve and practicing to gain experience before I go fee based.

Read more.
http://jgp-distribution.com/readmore.htm

Hope this helps!! Good luck!!

Originally Posted by Yayagogo

Hello WPW Community,
Since yesterday afternoon, I am experiencing the most alarming situation with Google. It seems that our entire site (directory) has dropped off the face of the earth. PR to homepage/internal pages remain the same, and all pages remain indexed within G.
My question to the cyber-sleuths in this forum is: What could have happened? Everything was fine until yesterday, when....BAM!

[Paul B]

Originally Posted by qbania

Could you extend the same courtesy to me please and check my HTML. I've made a ton of modifications to the site in the last 6o days. Maybe I'm looking at something and not realizing it could be responsible for bringing my sites keywords to a nasty spot on google (not in top 10).

http://www.wageronfootball.com

I'm fairly new to dreamweaver and have been teaching myself on the fly for the last 5 months. The actual template and layout of site was made for me. i've just done the addon content and pages.

Took a quick look:

1) You have no declaration of the top of your code.
2) Can't see any <h1><h2> tags
3) There's a lot of javascript in there
4) There are over 600 lines of code before any relevant text comes

Non of these factors are helping you.