Hello all, I run a Super Mario website called The Mario Bros at www.themariobros.net I stopped hardcore updating the site about a year ago and it was 3rd on the front page of google. I was still doing bi-monthly updates so it wasnt completely dead but had certainly slowed down. I'm back working on the site again now but I've noticed we arent first page anymore - I expected to have slipped down a bit due to the reduced activity - But it seems that all the sites that were previously at the top have completely gone and been replaced by significantly less relevant sites in some cases (I refer to the search results for the search keyphrase "mario bros") The site is no longer in like the top 10 pages at all, I cant even find any results for it. I have done search:themariobros.net and google has still got the pages indexed, they've just been put so low no one will ever find them. Has there been any major changes to the way search rankings work on google in the last year? anything important I should know? Any help greatly appreciated, Best regards Luke
Yes there have been many changes to Google in the last year or so. The main changes they made were to stop "spammy" sites, and make it so that SEO had to be done "naturally". If you dropped in rankings it probably means you had some "unnatural" backlinks coming to your site. Google "google penguin update" to find out more about it.