So i had this website since 1998 and it's ranked number one since then for it's three letter keyword, a few months back it dropped to page two on google and just this last week it now dropped to a all time low of Page 24, until 2008 i never had a competitor for that keyword and they are top! spamming links and blogs everywhere! how do i recover from this! i have even filed a reconsideration request only to be told! Ok so I'm totally at a loss as to what the problem might be, the site isn't ranking full stop in the first 24 pages of results for any of the usual keyword searches.
This is totally damn conditation, only google knows what happened. I think you should follow their suggestion to involve at google webmaster forum to get help.
The problem is totally on G's side! This will not calm you down, but just have a look at all the sh*ty, unrelated results on top. I also have a 2 KWs domain which was always on top not only for its domain name, but also for several VERY competitive key-phrases for last several years. Now on top is an empty site - it has a single image plus a couple of puzzles and a sentence that says the domain is for sale, that's it But its niche is travel and it is not in any way travel related except the domain name, which is very similar to mine and with similar age. The difference is that I cover several hundred destinations in this particular country (with unique content + some services).....still did not do anything bad - no black hat methods, no link buying/selling, no KW stuffing - nothing, all affiliate links are nofollow... To total it all - the results are quite a mess, but guess nowadays that's the way for G. to earn some extra funds from Adwords, hence to raise a bit their stock shares - IT WORKED OUT!.... It has been discussed a lot around DP and across the net, and I personally do not see any other explanation. Pity, but that's it... Now I just wonder how the f**k I keep maintaining some 60-70% of that site's initial traffic, since I do not rank anywhere (90% of the traffic is still from G's natural searches)?!?
I sometimes wonder if Google is bring these algorithm deliberately just for the webmasters! Because webmasters are the real competitor for PPC. Time to rethink.
Seems strange. So I take it you've checked out the list of "possible causes" Google gave you? (EG: No major changes to the site/URL structure, Servers response to Googlebot, CMS etc) What were the results of your investigation? Have you tried using WMT's to do a "Fetch as Googlebot" to see if your pages are returning what they are supposed to? Checked your .htaccess file to see whether its been tampered with? No paid/dodgy links passing PR on your site? etc. Without a list of things you have already checked, nobody can suggest other things to try. Cheers James
A lot of movement since yesterday, Google at work again I wonder how massive is that work from Google ? ... People are losing their bread and butter..... I hope Google will do something positive to make these people happy
@tattoos Site or URL structure: No changes Servers response to Googlebot: Checks out ok. Fetch as Googlebot: Reads website ok. .htaccess: No blocked google Ips or anything i can find, so that is clean! Paid Links: No, never paid for links ever! and i only link out to there other sites, links are all nofollow. Just a quick check of google now see my site on page 80 of my main three letter keyword.
same happened to me about 11/2 years back ...nothing was wrong with my site..anyway i am still happy with rankings in bing and yahoo.