I'm Dropping In Google... Any Thoughts/opinions Appreciated!

[Lampard]

It looks like a couple weeks ago I was hit with a Google algorithm change (my guess), and all my pages - that ranked on the first two SERPs - suddenly now reside on 4-5, or not at all. Obviously this kind of thing hits a lot of us from time to time, but this one puzzles me.

When I search for something like our products, I get pages that have fewer to none of the keywords I searched, and even fewer backlinks. In other words, some pretty poor pages beat mine. They are not very relevant. My pages are keyword rich for sure.

I still have a page rank of 4 (which dropped from a 5 a few months ago). I don't know if I'm being penalized for something.

I guess I don't really know what my next move should be, except to go through and keep trying to optimize for the words that my keyword research suggests. And to keep building backlinks. Your thoughts are appreciated!!!

[Dex]

I definitely wouldn't start panicking yet FTR. I noticed some unusual movement in Google for a couple of my "on the cusp"* sites over the past couple of weeks also. Whatever they're doing it seems like they've been waffling back and forth a bit. Where I'm seeing a particular phrase that is may normally be Page 1 for me (5-10 ranking) suddenly jump back to Page 2 or 3. Then another time I check it'll be back up there in the Top 10 again.

If you're going to do anything at all I would suggest trying to putting some effort into getting some more good quality, targeted inbound links. Not only will these help stabalize things in the short term, but in my experience they'll also help to limit such bouncing around in the future once you have a solid, diverse set of links pointing towards your site.

[kimbecker1]

I am noticing similar drops in ranking. My Pr is the same but a few weeks ago the # of google counted back links went down by about 60%.

I am hoping it is a temporary change, I too have noticed that some of the sites ahead of me in the ranking aren't very relevant. It always bothers me when ebay items that no longer exist are ahead of me, how relevant can that be!

I am always a little leary to make too many changes, but I have been working on making sure that I have no dead links, alt tags relevant, keyword density is good, etc. As well I am working on good inbound links.

Oh yeah, and keeping my fingers x'd.

[sneuman]

We had Cheapofficesupplies.com get lost this week for 4 days. When using the word "Office Supplies", we're normally in the top 15 of results on Google but ever now and then, we're gone and then 4 days later we're back. Very odd and nothing we seem to do on our end changes that.
Scott Neuman - Recordweb Communications LLC

[incrediblehelp]

Everyone please understand the days of stable rankings are over. This is because of many reasons at Google...inclusion of personlization, demographics, localization, etc, etc into the search algo.

DONT panic when your ranking is here one day and gone the next.

[xenith]

Interesting this would be my 1st day at this forum, and this would be the topic for my first reply.

We just got hit by big decrease in Adsense income, on our main pages.

One thing we learned the hard way is: Never ever use any software that generates webpages autimatically as so many subscribe to that theory. The more pages the better!

Obviously, the Google bots are searching for those who put these sites together.

The generators (No brand names used) that produce pages instantly are taking the owners of those sites to the cleaners. It was just a matter of time.

One other thing that is taking a fair share of our income is illegal clicks, and I am not necessarily referring to the owner of the site clicking their own pages.

Apparantly, your competition may be helping to take your sites off the Google charts, and severely handicapping your income.

You can guard against this with fraud clicking protection.

www.adlogger.org/ offers a free download.

Could save you some grief.

Good luck.

[Webnauts]

I only would like to add here that my rankings the last months are improving dramatically.

[Keimos]

Hi Lampard,

Sit tight for a few weeks before worrying. Its always the same when G plays with the Algo but generally if your site was well found it will return as G sorts itself out.

Keimos

[Webnauts]

Hi Lampard,

Sit tight for a few weeks before worrying. Its always the same when G plays with the Algo but generally if your site was well found it will return as G sorts itself out.

Keimos

Keimos are you sure? I know endless of sites that never came back. How can you tell if the site conforms to the new algos?

[Keimos]

You can tell if you are on a downward slide by watching your stats. If visitors keep dropping then you do need to adjust your pages. Read forums like this to get a feel of what is happening.

Its just that in the past I have experienced and heard of panic site overhauls that resulted in being totally dropped in ranking.

Its a touchy, feely thing. I,ve now been through three algo changes and just left the site unchanged apart from pages that had to be updated. Seen a slump and then pop up to around where we were ranked previously.

Keimos