SERPS and Google

[Charity Dalek]

I have a problem with one of our ecommerce websites in that any search with Google would have resulted in us landing on the first page. Today when I repeat the search we are no where to be found (page 5 or less). When I repeat the search with say Yahoo we are always on page 1.

Things I have checked. Page rank is still 3 (not that this should be relevant). Back Links are all in place. Webgrader score is down a little, but still good for the site. All 250 pages are indexed by Google.

We have been adding additional pages, but this has been an ongoing activity for months. From the Stats S/W I do not see any decline in the number of page views that the site is receiving.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Has there been a general change with Google that I might have missed. Might I have inadvertently annoyed Google in some way?

Thanks for your reples.

Robert

[SnerdeyWebs]

Google is not going to keep you at number 1 or even the 1st page if you do not keep up with all the updates to the algorithms and in all fairness they do tend to rotate sites somewhat.

Have you removed or made changes to the index or structure of the site?

We noticed a drop and then a surge in the past couple of months. Something changed and then it was back to normal. It's not easy to be number one but I think in your case it will require some digging to see just what happened.

Possibly a competitor or new competitors have improved SEO?

Might check here for all kinds of ideas regarding Algorithms.
Google Penalty Checklist: Rank Drop Troubleshooting Guide

[SemAdvance]

Hi

Without seeing the site or search term(s) involved... all you have done is invited speculation as to problems.... and in return you will receive a ton of misinformation that will have you chasing your tail, making changes that will hurt the site further, and in general making things more confused than they are.

The best advice is to sit tight and see what happens.

I had a possible client recently who had a site established in the # 1 position ( I understand yours was first page) for years whose site had recently disappeared.

He wanted me to fix things with SEO and to start immediately.... I had to turn him down as I knew within a week or two things would likely be back to normal.

I advised the gentleman to wait a couple weeks and then if nothing had changed, to then contact me.

Needless to say he did not need to contact me....

Be patient..Google takes months to score sites and is never in a rush to react..

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by SnerdeyWebs

... if you do not keep up with all the updates to the algorithms

Since Google guards the details of such like Crown Jewels, how is "keeping up" possible?

Originally Posted by SnerdeyWebs

... in all fairness they do tend to rotate sites somewhat.

Authoritative citation(s) needed to support this claim.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Charity Dalek

Does anyone have any thoughts?

The number and kinds of factors involved make a definitive answer to this frequent question unattainable. Such factors include, but are not necessarily limited to:

1) Google's frequent tweaking of their various algorithms, and the implementations of such.

2) Externalities, such as addition of or changes to other sites.

3) The particular data center from which a given set of results was generated.

4) The specific manner in which the search was performed, including user specified parameters, both implicit and explicit.

5) The presence and settings of a Google Toolbar.

6) Whether or not one is or is not logged into a Google account.

The only constant is change itself.

[joncase]

One of my clients has the same problem. He has disappeared from page one of G SERPs for his key search term. On doing some searching, I found that a large B2B site has copied most of his home page copy and placed it in a number of their business listings. These are bogus listings for businesses that do not exist as advertised. At first I made a complaint to G through WebmasterTools about spam/duplicate content. In about a week, my clients site was back to its page one ranking. Within the next week, it disappeared again. My client has now filed a DMCA complaint with G. What we can't understand is why G, upon receipt of a complaint, does seem to look at cached versions of the text on both sites to find who first published the content. They are not doing themselves any favors by presenting the duplicate content, which is useless to the visitor, ahead of ours, which targets the search term exactly.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by joncase

One of my clients has the same problem. He has disappeared from page one of G SERPs for his key search term. On doing some searching, I found that a large B2B site has copied most of his home page copy and placed it in a number of their business listings. These are bogus listings for businesses that do not exist as advertised. At first I made a complaint to G through WebmasterTools about spam/duplicate content. In about a week, my clients site was back to its page one ranking. Within the next week, it disappeared again. My client has now filed a DMCA complaint with G. What we can't understand is why G, upon receipt of a complaint, does seem to look at cached versions of the text on both sites to find who first published the content. They are not doing themselves any favors by presenting the duplicate content, which is useless to the visitor, ahead of ours, which targets the search term exactly.

Google notes date of inception of all documents.

Google does not present content, they present listings to content on other websites of which they have little to no control.

Google needs time to make the needed changes and this can take weeks to months.

Google is not the ISP so not much they can do to enforce the DMCA complaint. Contact the offending sites hosting company and have a lawyer to make it stick...

[shakir]

Originally Posted by Charity Dalek

I have a problem with one of our ecommerce websites in that any search with Google would have resulted in us landing on the first page. Today when I repeat the search we are no where to be found (page 5 or less). When I repeat the search with say Yahoo we are always on page 1.

Things I have checked. Page rank is still 3 (not that this should be relevant). Back Links are all in place. Webgrader score is down a little, but still good for the site. All 250 pages are indexed by Google.

We have been adding additional pages, but this has been an ongoing activity for months. From the Stats S/W I do not see any decline in the number of page views that the site is receiving.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Has there been a general change with Google that I might have missed. Might I have inadvertently annoyed Google in some way?

Thanks for your reples.

Robert

How old ur site... and what about urs old traffic... is the keyword is much competitive?...
For new sites its happening and can say its normal... but I feel urs site is little old .. so has to be careful... and check the BL and also are u updating the content?.. if not do it.. change the title and some description too.

[cocofried]

SnerdeyWebs
I found your information very helpful. Using the Copyscape on one of my sites I found 2 pages that had too much of the same information from my main site.
Big Thank You

[full house]

well, thats normal for me, specially for not so old sites. Better re optimize your site based on your target keywords. Then build quality links. . . links that are related to your site.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by full house

well, thats normal for me, specially for not so old sites. Better re optimize your site based on your target keywords. Then build quality links. . . links that are related to your site.

Relevance to OP's question?

[honsikrey]

google is well aware of these sites getting priority.. believe what you want but it's not a coincidence they haven't done anything.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by honsikrey

google is well aware of these sites getting priority.. believe what you want but it's not a coincidence they haven't done anything.

What sites?

What "priority."

Proof(s)/citation(s) required.

[educational]

Originally Posted by deepsand

The number and kinds of factors involved make a definitive answer to this frequent question unattainable. Such factors include, but are not necessarily limited to:

1) Google's frequent tweaking of their various algorithms, and the implementations of such.

2) Externalities, such as addition of or changes to other sites.

^^ +1, also Never FORGET the 2nd point mentioned above quote, don't take granted that your COMPETITOR will remain 2nd to you. Check those site for changes & do not forget to monitor their ranks/pr/backlinks etc. etc. too.

HTH

[robertupper]

With all these people talking about Google rank, I'll tell you that I have over 20 websites which all got major boosts on the last update and I saw no change whatsoever in search term ranking. One of my busiest websites went from a 3 to a 4 while my competitor dropped from a 5 to a 3, and there was no real change in either their placement or ours. Though everybody says ranking is crucial, from where I'm sitting I don't see any changes at all and have a lot sites at 4, etc. And if ranking was so crucial as everyone wants me to believe, how can my competitor drop from a 5 to a 3 and still be in the top 10 with virtually no change in any of their search terms? I think you people put way too much emphasis on google rank when it simply does not have the significance you say it does. Now, when I watch Yahoo, I see constant daily change and it seems to have a much better, accurate system of ranking.

[regmac]

Originally Posted by Charity Dalek

I have a problem with one of our ecommerce websites in that any search with Google would have resulted in us landing on the first page. Today when I repeat the search we are no where to be found (page 5 or less). When I repeat the search with say Yahoo we are always on page 1.

Things I have checked. Page rank is still 3 (not that this should be relevant). Back Links are all in place. Webgrader score is down a little, but still good for the site. All 250 pages are indexed by Google.

We have been adding additional pages, but this has been an ongoing activity for months. From the Stats S/W I do not see any decline in the number of page views that the site is receiving.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Has there been a general change with Google that I might have missed. Might I have inadvertently annoyed Google in some way?

Thanks for your reples.

Robert

I experienced the same problem and just now I got back to where I was before. I think Google's rankings for sites has been dancing few weeks ago which is very noticeable on my end since I lost every rankings I have from google which is very confusing since I haven't decreased my backlinks yet it's increasing. Before new year has started I am ranking very well but in the middle of january (I thought) I've experienced a very disappointing result on SERP. I am kicked out (my site). I was left with my site not ranking with any keywords I optimized for it. I took further reading and found out this usually happens especially when google does the update, things like google dance, sandbox, reversed positioning and etc. I exerted patience and keep doing what I opt to believe is effective until I got back my site's ranking (today, feb.6), and I am doing pretty well. Am so glad.