Like a lot of people (according to many of the threads here), my ranking got hammered last week, so now I am waiting to see if and when it will correct itself. I checked Webmaster Tools today, and it shows that I am still ranked in the top 10 for several keywords, and the info was updated Oct. 12th. The problem is...my actual ranking when manually looked up on Google is around 170 for my main keyword. Anybody else running into this? Any suggestions or theories?
I too have several keywords mentioned in Webmaster tools for which i rank no 1 but not anymore, I used to rank at no. 1. Webmaster tools reports are updated weekly i guess. Don't believe the date mentioned alongside.
Even I had several keywords in Webmaster tools with no 1 rank but not now. Webmaster reports get weekly updated. So do not panic and try to check the status oftenly. you will find the solution to this soon.
I think it also matters if you have personal search turned on. Webmaster tools seems to forget to turn of that feature. So if on your personlized search the site is on 5th, but for everyone else it is 170, it will turn up as 5th in webmaster tools.
Try to choose Web Search only and specific language. I have few sites showing top 10 for some keywords but as it turned out it was on images search of google.
Have you checked image search for the KW's . If you come up in image search webmaster tools will show the ranking and does not distinuish between regular and image search. For example if you search for widget and come up #8 in image search then it will show you rank 8 for that kw even though on the regular search you do not. Just something to check as we have run into this before.
It is normal. Webmaster tools are always lag behind and not accurate. IMO. Rank checker from seobook might be a nice alternative.
I am actually using Rank Checker from SEO tools - that is what is saying that I am #170. I just verified it by going to Google and manually searching for my keyword. I did look into the image search idea, and that is not the problem. This drop is very frustrating...I spent a lot of time and money getting my sites into the top 10 (all white hat), and now this.
Google always does algoritm changes. I guess affiliate sites were something of what they targeted this time? And I presume those keywords are heavy contested, so small changes make for big serp differences?
I have 3 affiliate sites - 2 are Wordpress, and the other is a Yola site. Both Wordpress sites dropped heavily in the rankings within the last week, while the Yola site held its ranking. Anybody else experience something similar? Probably no connection, but I am going crazy trying to figure out why I went from 7th to 170th...
Well I can tell from my drop in traffic that I am no longer in the top 10 in most or all datacenters. I went from getting 300-400 visitors a day to less than 10.
Yes...I did, anyway :-( Not sure if this is just a temporary Google Dance thing or what, but it is killing my traffic and income. I keep hoping to wake up and see my sites back in the top 10 again, but nothing yet.