Hi Guys, Could anyone help me out with this. We have been doing SEO on our website 7-months old. We have been tageting some competitve keywords and climbling up the serps. We recently gained the highest position yet, 11th, 15th, 17th for our three major "very competitve" keywords. I check the serps daily, today we where at our highest yet, then bang.... as of two hourse ago all our rankings have dropped to page 18, 27 and off the serps. We have invested alot of money in this site, and have great backlinks pointing to us. Whats going on?
I have seen this often. I usually climb back up in a couple of days. Did you make any recent changes?
Nope, we have been building links the last few weeks, Dir, social etc.... Site started going up the serps, we went to pos 11th, then one day on the first page for a few hours. Everything was looking great, then about 2hrs ago, all our major keywords have dropped greatly. Is this a penalty?
it happens guy. I am very sure things will be fine soon. It is quite normal for pages to change sometimes. your rankings will comeback.
Ok just done a full check: Keyword 1, was 11th - now 96th keyword 2, was 14th - now 423rd keyword 3, was 18th - now 645th Keyword 4 was 20th - now off serps.
Search Engines act in mysterious ways, especially Google. But, looks like you are back up to speed. Nice work!
I think your confused, we have dropped many pages for our main keywords. I'm not sure if it's a penalty or what?
If you've built a lot of links in just the last few weeks Google may be suspicious that the link activity is not "natural" and may be penalizing you because of it. It's sometimes referred to as over-optimizing. My site did the same thing at the beginning of April. It was gone for 2 weeks then came back better than ever but only for 10 days and now it's gone again. Make sure you check all the Google webmaster guidelines. Do you have too many reciprocal links on your site? If you find anything you may have violated you can fix it and file a reconsideration request. Sorry - I know it sucks!
Check the people with good pr that were linking to you havent shafted you by removing the links or making them nofollow. That happened to me. If nothing has changed then im sure you will go up the rankings again. Has your PR been changed as well?
Sorry, I just read it wrong.. I don't think you are getting penalized in anyway, but Google is just making sure that your site is of worth while to Internet Readers. Just an example: I had my site on Page 1 of Google, then all of a sudden it dropped to page 9, then it was gone... I had no clue what the heck happened. But, 3 days later, it came back, but it only came back to page 2, still good, but not good enough. Could have just been Google doing their regular updates and other relevant sites to mine had better content and moved up the ladder. I'm just trying to tell you, NO worries, you should be fine, but if you need help with it, I can help..
I would agree. It looks like you've triggered some red flag at Google. Did you vary the link text of the keywords you were targeting? Or did you create hundreds or thousands of links with the exact same anchor text for each keyword?
Might not be a penalty but an adjustment. I have dropped off the map for my domain keywords before, for up to 3 days. This is a position I have held first on since day # 1 of my site. "Home Computer Games". Just before I went into a depression it popped back to #1. I would give it a few days before I panicked. I know it is easier said than done.
Guys i think our site may have been hacked. Just visited our site on google chrome got this msg "The website at contains elements from the site profitooltip.biz, which appears to host malware - software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that contains malware can infect your computer." Looking at my code, i see some suspicious Java in footer. <script type="text/javascript">var TDCxoycNncDCwPoPilfS = "JuDhm60JuDhm105JuDhm102JuDhm114JuDhm97JuDhm109JuDhm101JuDhm32JuDhm119JuDhm105JuDhm... Have we been hacked, If so i need to contact our web design company, I can't access this.
Two options: Yes you were "hacked"! Just tell your designers to upload the latest version of the site, if they are responsible they should have an updated backup. You are using some widget from profitooltip.biz which is distributing malware and you might have been flagged.
I have dropped from number one in my keyword to 7th 10th and more for a day or two. Then it went back up. I have also had to re-adjust Content and Index page out bound links to get back up. Some of the recovery time might a variable be due to your how often you set yourself to be spidered. I set mine to pretty fast to keep up with added content.
While not exactly the same problem I have seen my serps drop from page 1 and 2 to pages 5 and 6 and they just aren't climbing. It could be too many backlinks, doesn't really look like a slap although you just need to wait and see. I know it is frustrating to see them drop like that! As you can see no one here knows for certain what is happening but most sites have seen this crazy fluctuation before and it really is rare that you are getting a penalty as the serps do move a lot. Try not looking at them every day 10 times a day as it will drive you crazy. Trust me, I know! Also, never underestimate your competition. they look at the serps as much, maybe more than you do. When they see someone breathing down their necks they tend to react to protect their positions. One factor that is not mentioned often enough on DP is that ALL webmasters have access to the same info we do here on DP and I suggest the sites on pages 1, 2 and likely 3 are checking their positions very often. The harder you work, the harder they work. Not very encouraging but you need to keep on keeping on, keep doing what you were doing and your rankings will return but again not to be a sad sack getting in the top 10 or even 20 just ain't that easy and often it does mean "over optimizing". It really sucks that you virtually have to over optimize if it takes 30,000 back links to get on a page one and you are starting from 1. Unless you have the rest of the century over optimizing is a risky but necessary evil if you are heading for the top.
that is a normal thing in the field of seo and it only means one thing, your website is not yet stable just like others thinking with their site. The only solution for that is to build more backlinks.