Hi. I'm hoping you can shed some light on a problem I'm having. For around the last 6 months, my website hxxp://www.limotek.co.uk ranked well for particular keywords but as of this morning, the site seems to have dropped on average 5 pages for each keyword. Have I been penalised / sandboxed by Google? The table below shows some examples of where the site was yesterday and now the position is today. Keyword | Yesterday | Today Limo Hire | 4 | 68 Limousine Hire | 5 | 63 Limo Hire London | 7 | 68 Limo Hire Newcastle | 3 | 38 Limo Hire Liverpool | 3 | 55 Limo Hire Birmingham | 25 | 66 Limo Hire Essex | 16 | 43 Limo Hire Surrey | 27 | 63 Limo Hire Manchester | 11 | 64 Limo Hire Glasgow | 5 | 48 I'm thinking this could be a sandbox/penalty as all key phrases have dropped by a similar amount. The only change I have made to the site in the last month has been to amend the address in the footer (done yesterday) as we have moved offices although I'm thinking this is too recent and minor to be the reason. In terms of link building over the last few months, this has been article, blog and forum posting as well as a handful of link exchanges. I have never paid for links. Another interesting point to note is that a major competitor has also experienced the same problem and has had a lot of their websites dropped by a similar amount which is why I'm thinking sandbox/penalty. I'd be grateful for any feedback you can give.
The same dropped as happened to one of my sites too...I am also figuring out why this happened suddenly...And same problem its happened thrice...Anybody has answer or has faced, please recommend us the solution.
I think that if you are sanboxed, you site completely disappears from google search results. So this might be only some smaller penalty... or thay altered the serp algorithm again
You have been whacked with a penalty by the looks of it. I do not think its just a change in algo. I know you said you have only changed the footer but that will not account for that drop. Its not relevent. Unless you changed more than just the address. Ive had a quick look at your links. I couldnt look in detail im too busy with my own work, but the first thing that caught my eye was I saw the majority of backlinks appear to be coming from article sites. Be careful with that. You need to get backlinks from other sites and blogs as well. I saw a similar thing happen to a clients site. They went from fourth on google to middle of nowhere in days. All because over 90% of their backlinks were from article directories (their doing) If you are 100% sure its nothing you have changed on the site then its the backlinks. You havent altered the content right? page name(s) or changed anything else. I normally keep a very close eye on the competition, their keywords and where they rank. Check where they are too. look at google webmaster tools and see if there is anything in there that suggests there is a problem or any errors or warnings about your sitemap or anything.
It is not a penalty.It is just google's changing . You just do nothing and wait for good news! Good luck!
Yeah, one way to fix this if it's just a natural drop in rankings - which it likely is - is to make sure as an earlier poster recommended that you're getting links from a variety of places. Commenting on forums is particularly powerful - maybe find community or city-based cites in the UK to comment on? Add some social bookmarking to the mix if you can, too. It appears that the days of article marketing working so well are over - I think Google is starting to crack down on sites where the most backlinks are from article directories. Dan
I dont believe markyp. Google has already said shady backlinks will not be counted but they will not be used against you meaning you cant get drop in page rank because your links are from article directories. Something else is the answer to why there is some sudden drop in your rankings. May be there are new competitors who have bought out old domaisn and started business for your keywords
Thanks for all the replies so far. Traffic-Bug: Good idea but this is something I've kept an eye on and it seems all other competitors bar one are where they used to be. I haven't seen any new sites or heard of any changing ownership. markyp: Thanks for the suggestions but the source of links has been like this for quite some time and hasn't previously been an issue (although I'm not ruling it out). Also, because it's happened to one other competitor, it would be quite a coincidence if they had the same mixture of links as us. I've spoken to an SEO company and they have indicated it may be because either we have a link exchange section which Google now penalises or we have not added new content for a month. I'm not sure I agree with this and I'd like to hear someone elses opinion.
this kind of thing happens all the time. my sites go up and down for the most of keywords every 3 to 4 months.
@traffic bug. Let me point a few things out to you though. firstly your site PR has got nothing to do with its serps position. nada. secondly I see this happen to sites every single day. a drop like this is either because of a change on the site or something google does not like. or both and thirdly I didnt say shady backlinks I said backlinks from mainly article directories. If google sees it as unnatural link building they will penalise you. @ limotek -not adding content for a month would not cause the site to drop this much. thats BS. I never saw the links before because I was too busy to look. If one or more sites you are linking to have started using link farms or other shady practices you could be indirectly effected. There is another possibilty. Someone else is trying to muscle in on your niche and is using some blackhat tactics to hit your site. I would firstly check your backlinks to see if there is any unusual activity, if you get my drift. Second I would check your linking partners to see if they are doing anything naughty. Whatever the cause is, unfortunately its a matter of elimination and that takes time.
Isn't Google either in the middle of or just finished a larger than usual update of sorts? Couldn't this just be a case of a Googledance of sorts