Keyword phrase went to zero on a specific day!

[PaulMycroft]

Hi all,

In analyzing my client's traffic using Google Analytics, I noticed something very strange happening on a specific date.

Custom Picture Framing | Fine Art Gallery | Custom Mirrors (http://www.hmarionframing.com)

On September 15th, 2009 (to today on January 26th, 2010), they have received zero referrals for the phrase "custom picture framing chicago" whereas the months before (July and August), they received 54 and 57 respectively.

I am stumped on this one. Does any one have an idea as to what might have happened or a solution to fix it?

Thanks so much.

TIA.

[mjtaylor]

Is it possible that your server was down that day? I assume there were other phrases searched that day ...

Google has been known to report anomalies ... perhaps it is nothing more than that.

[morestar]

I just searched google.com with your keywords and didn't find your website on the first page. I am in Canada mind you.

Have you noticed that your client's site is not showing up in the search results as high as they were in July/August of last year?

[mjtaylor]

I searched custom picture framing chicago and found your site at 69.

[SemAdvance]

I am not sure whats more of a miff, the fact the client lost rankings or its 5 months later and you are now asking.......

A bit in hindsight, but it seems whatever anchor links were boosting the rankings were devalued by the search engines, and your client fell to the middle of nowhere....

Build some more anchor text links using the keyphrase and you should be back at the top shortly.

[morestar]

A bit in hindsight, but it seems whatever anchor links were boosting the rankings were devalued by the search engines, and your client fell to the middle of nowhere.....

...or his competitors applied successful SEO to their sites over the holidays, before or after...

I'll put money on it that the problem has nothing to do with the links pointing to his site being devalued...

[andrew-bkk]

I've had a couple of situations similar to this and on both occasions it was due to competitors boosting their own SEO as opposed to any error/s on my or my clients' part.

[mjtaylor]

Not to devalue any of the answers so far, but I would be interested to hear more on this from other members.

[PaulMycroft]

Thanks for all of your answers here.


I am not sure whats more of a miff, the fact the client lost rankings or its 5 months later and you are now asking.......

SemAdvance: I don't do regular SEO for them - the last time I worked with them was August 2009 so when I did my recent analysis, discovered this anomaly so thought I would ask.

In my experience, I have never encountered such a dramatic drop-off in search referrals for a particular keyword.

But you may have touched on the answer. I think an update to the Google algorithm around that time pushed the site way down and hence, zero referrals.

Thanks again. I'll get to work on those links and anchor text.