Hundred Top Rankings disappeared in a few hours... Need help!

[rgardenti]

Hello,
I take care of 8 italian websites related to Ferry Boat ticket reservations, wich have been ranking Top 3 and Top 5 for about 400 Keywords each in the last 5 years... Till yesterday evening... This morning the BIG surprise: all these top rankings DROPPED down in fifth/ sixth page!!! ALL OF THEM!
The only problem I can find is that all these websites are very similar, but this have never been a problem in last 5 years....
Maybe some new Duplicate Content Filter?
A couple of websites dropped: traghetti-sardegna dot it or traghetti-croazia dot it

Any suggestion will be appreciated..
Thank you for your help
Roberto

[mjtaylor]

Duplicate content can kill a site ...

[Ace]

Check this link :- Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty" it may help you

[morestar]

Well my recent experience compels me to ask if you've done anything to the site recently? any changes, big or small anywhere?

[rgardenti]

Absolutely not. Last changes have been made in june. As said, everything was fine till two days ago... Rankings growing every month and some hundreds keywords stable in top 3 positions in the last 3 years... Really incredible situation!

[morestar]

well give us the URL, let us see what we can find for you...

[rgardenti]

Thank you for providing this link, but, frankly speaking, I have read it too many times...
This is a useful article, but absolutely not helpful in my case... We can't speak of scraped content from other sites, as well as we are not speaking of pages that can be reached from different urls...
We are speaking about 10 different websites, each one targeting a specific geografic location (Greece, then Croatia, Then Corsica and so on...) that have in common the same layout, the same navigation bar the same footer informations (because it's always the same company...)... So, is this enough to generate that disaster?? Also I can't understand why everything have been fine in the last 5 years (I handle these sites from 2004...) and now, suddenly, in one night, everything is crashed without any action on my part!! I find it really crazy!

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by morestar

well give us the URL, let us see what we can find for you...

I can't post urls here yet... How can I send you the urls?

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by morestar

well give us the URL, let us see what we can find for you...

try this traghetti-sicilia dot it

[rgardenti]

as well as traghetti-sardegna dot it or traghetti-corsica dot it

[morestar]

OK the one quick answer (without knowing much about your site(s)) is that these type of disasters do happen sometime and go back to normal after a few days, if not weeks...

I'm not saying this will be the case with you but there is a good chance this is temporary.

Recently one of my sites went from #5 to page 9 - I did make changes though and then I reverted back to the original - after I reverted my rankings went back to normal. I'm not 100% sure it was due to the changes but I'm strongly assuming it was and it had to do with something like what you're experiencing.

I basically created a bunch of regional sub-domains, same footer etc. I launched them, linked to them and boom, I dropped to page 9.

The difference is that your site has been doing well in it's current state for over 5 years.

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by morestar

OK the one quick answer (without knowing much about your site(s)) is that these type of disasters do happen sometime and go back to normal after a few days, if not weeks...

I'm not saying this will be the case with you but there is a good chance this is temporary.

Recently one of my sites went from #5 to page 9 - I did make changes though and then I reverted back to the original - after I reverted my rankings went back to normal. I'm not 100% sure it was due to the changes but I'm strongly assuming it was and it had to do with something like what you're experiencing.

I basically created a bunch of regional sub-domains, same footer etc. I launched them, linked to them and boom, I dropped to page 9.

The difference is that your site has been doing well in it's current state for over 5 years.

Yes, I also have experienced sometime that situations, and I am hoping that would be the same also in this case... But what is alarming me is that just one of these sites have not crashed, and is still ranking fine without any loss of rankings, whereas the other 9 have crashed in full!

[morestar]

Ah ha! So the one site, would it be 'considered' the main site?

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by morestar

Ah ha! So the one site, would it be 'considered' the main site?

Not realy... As said, each site target a specific location... This site just target Elba Island and it have nothing different from others that target other locations... What I have to say is that this site in the last 3 years have always displaied sitelinks in Google...

[morestar]

OK well this is a mystery to me, I'm sure others will have a better perspective...my best idea at this point is that you're sites are being affected by the recent update...

But as I said, others will try to help you shortly, I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out...

[ncseo]

check the affiliate slap that happened a few months ago

there are a lot of sites still experiencing it

if your content is very similar across your site, and has similar content with other sites then you better start changing the content IMMEDIATELY

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by ncseo

check the affiliate slap that happened a few months ago

there are a lot of sites still experiencing it

if your content is very similar across your site, and has similar content with other sites then you better start changing the content IMMEDIATELY

Thank you for your advice... I was not aware about it, and it could be... But one question remain in my mind: why not all the sites have lost rankings? One of them is still there without any problem... The website without problems is traghetti-elba dot it

[newsfreak]

I heard one of my friend losing his website's ranking by a lot due to some "affiliate" issue which meant duplication of content? Not sure

[angilina]

Originally Posted by rgardenti

try this traghetti-sicilia dot it

Copyscape detects duplicate content in your site. Also, a simple search of content from your site show that the content appears in many other sites too.

Duplicate content can hurt the ranking of your site(s).

[ncseo]

google updates serps by keywords/niches...and tld...and regions/countries

sooner or later they'll get to you....and if someone reports you...they'll get you faster

Originally Posted by rgardenti

Thank you for your advice... I was not aware about it, and it could be... But one question remain in my mind: why not all the sites have lost rankings? One of them is still there without any problem... The website without problems is traghetti-elba dot it

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by ncseo

google updates serps by keywords/niches...and tld...and regions/countries

sooner or later they'll get to you....and if someone reports you...they'll get you faster

Ok... But what I CAN'T understand is: what I have to do with affiliate slap??? I have read this apply to affiliate websites, and we don't have any connection with affiliate marketing... All these sites are owned by a travel agency and they have nothing to do with affiliate marketing. So?

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by angilina

Copyscape detects duplicate content in your site. Also, a simple search of content from your site show that the content appears in many other sites too.

Duplicate content can hurt the ranking of your site(s).

Yes, I know... I am aware about it. But read the following points...
First... As I have told, we have a group of about 10 websites very similar between them, but each targeting a specific geografic location. Some of duplicates you find there are these sites...
The second point is that some other duplication found by copyscape are related just to the footer, and this is because this company owns many tourism related websites, each showing company details in the footer...
Third point... This situation is like you see now since 2004!!! Why now should be a problem?? Something is changed in Google alghoritm?

[ncseo]

the affiliate slap came about because all the affiliate sites have the same content

Google's duplicate content filter is now weeding out all duplicate content

so you you have to change ALL of your content to make it unique

Originally Posted by rgardenti

Ok... But what I CAN'T understand is: what I have to do with affiliate slap??? I have read this apply to affiliate websites, and we don't have any connection with affiliate marketing... All these sites are owned by a travel agency and they have nothing to do with affiliate marketing. So?

[nickoran]

Simple trial would be to take one site and change it as much as possible and see the results.

[rgardenti]

Originally Posted by nickoran

Simple trial would be to take one site and change it as much as possible and see the results.

Done the day after... No way... No changes in rankings...
BUT, today, AFTER 8 days, everything have been restored by Google, and we are back in first positions with hundred keywords!!! CRAZY!!!
In the meanwhile we have lost some thousand Euros...
THANK YOU GOOGLE, and hope you die tomorrow!!!

[morestar]

But then you wouldn't make another thousand Euros!