I've Been Hit!

[watto]

Approx 6 months ago I went from the #2 position to the #1 position for my main term 'business for sale' (after holding the #2 position for approx 3 years). I also held the #1 position for my second biggest term 'businesses for sale' for the last 3 years.

On Saturday 7th Jan 2012 my site dropped to #7 for both of these terms. Highly unusual for such a big drop. All othe sites on page 1 simply moved up 1 spot (because I went down). I haven't done anything out of the norm to my site other than launch a mobile version the day before my drop in the serps, which I have eliminated as a cause.

I am scratching my head! Could I have been penalized?

I can't believe this has happend to my site. I've seen threads like this before and always thought they must have been doing something wrong. I've been consistantly holding my top rankings for years and for Google to kick my ass like this doesn't make sense.......

[SteveGerencser]

You have increased your problem by knee jerk reacting..

[williamc]

weekend flux is generally a sign of an engineer playing with new algo ideas. Give it a few more days before worrying watto.

[watto]

Thanks for the feedback! I have only reversed the mobile site for now, so it will be easy to re-install once my rankings come back...........fingers crossed! Other than this I haven't touched anything, so I'll sit back and wait as suggested. Your comments actually give me hope

[watto]

weekend flux is generally a sign of an engineer playing with new algo ideas. Give it a few more days before worrying watto.

The weird thing is that I was the only site that moved. Could this be a manual penalty? I don't want to jump the gun and I am obviously prepared to sit and wait this out, but just trying to eliminate a few ideas.

[deepsand]

You doubly muddied the waters by stirring them twice in rapid succession - once with the addition of the mobile sub-domain; again with its being re-directed back to the main domain - without waiting for them to settle down after the first change.

At the moment, there's nothing constructive to be done other than simply wait.

[SteveGerencser]

The weird thing is that I was the only site that moved. Could this be a manual penalty? I don't want to jump the gun and I am obviously prepared to sit and wait this out, but just trying to eliminate a few ideas.

Manual penalties tend to mean out of the index, and most certainly not still on page one.. BTW, this is the stress of relying on Google for your business

[deepsand]

BTW, this is the stress of relying on Google for your business

AKA being had by the G-string.

[watto]

Manual penalties tend to mean out of the index, and most certainly not still on page one.. BTW, this is the stress of relying on Google for your business

Ok, cool. That makes sense.

[SEOforGoogle]

Another possibility for the loss in rankings (had the same thing happen to me, #1 dropped to #4) - was loss of links pointing to the site that made it #1. Client made no changes to their site from a coding perspective, was adding content on weekly basis like they have been for over 3 years.