Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : HELP! All my google terms dropped off?

[EthicalEpi]

Is google doing its dance at the moment?

I've just checked my stats and noticed a noticeable drop in traffic recently (I usually get a lot of hits from google).

I've just checked out my rankings with the digitalpoint keyword tool and noticed that pretty much all of my most popular search phrases (lots of them with a first page listing) have completely dissapeared off the scale alltogether for those terms.

I could understand a few places up or down, but almost all of them are showing a drop of almost 1000 places and there are now far less relevant pages to my search terms showing up well before them.

None of my pages are spam, they're all relevant to the phrases, well constructed pages on a decently designed site.

Does anyone have any idea why this might happen. It's crossed my mind that a competitor or someone who has it in for me could have spammed google with my pages hence them being dropped. Is there any way for me to check that?

[EthicalEpi]

P.S. My host did have about 8 hours downtime due to a router outage about a week or so ago. Could this have been caused by that?

The pages are still there, just not showing up on relevant search terms.

[JTY]

Could be many things. Google does try hard to keep people from artificially raising their ranking.

[MGCJerry]

My site has been jumping around quite a bit in the past few days. Yesterday, I had a PR or 1, now it is back up to 5.

I've also noticed the same with my search results. I think they are probably doing another update but I'm no SE expert though.

[EthicalEpi]

I haven't really done anything to try ot artificially raise my ranking on any of these terms (or any other terms for that matter). My site is a couple of years old now and has been towards the top on some of these phrases for about a year and steadily climbing (without me actually changing anything).

I'm at a bit of a loss why this has happened. The page rank is the same as it always has been (actually improved on a couple of pages).

What's most surprising is that it's dropped so many places. I could understand if it dropped a few places due to new submissions or other peoples page rank improving, but for it to drop 10,000 places (for some of the terms) and now to have sites that have very little to nothing to do with the search terms showing up above mine is mindboggling.

The only thing I can think is that I'm being penalised in some way, but for what I really can't understand.

[JayC]

Originally posted by EthicalEpi
The only thing I can think is that I'm being penalised in some way, but for what I really can't understand.

Probably not directly or by any actual "penalty" directed at you. But recent changes at Google targeting specific areas of search are aimed at placing informational sites more prominently than commercial sites.

In many cases it's basically putting directory listings regarding products ahead of pages that actually sell the product.

[EthicalEpi]

Thanks JayC. It looks like that might have something to do with it, though why they've dropped so far off the scale is still a bit of a mystery to me, particularly for some of the phrases where anyone typing those phraseswill obviously be looking for a service rather than information.

If someone types 'web designer' in google, the chances are that they're looking for a web designer rather than thousands of pages telling them how to design a web site.

That's not one of the specific phrases I'm talking about but just to give an example.

It's a bit dissapointing, but I guess I'll have to live with it. What I can't figure out is how they can tell that it's a commercial rather than informational site (as my site is a bit of both) unless they've manually checked it or something.

[Vexhst]

I've noticed the same thing with my ranking. I spoke with a friend who works at google and he said they changed their algorythems< ? to work better with search terms. Done every year for better results

[Sparta.cn]

How recently where you put into Google? After 2ish months after induction, you drop. Its called google... eh.. something, fluctuation or something. You're artifically raised REALLY high in rankings your first month, then you drop a lot.

[EthicalEpi]

I've been in there for a couple of years, though the last year has seen an increase in my ranking as I added more pages to the site and more people have linked to me. A lot more than 2 months though with very consistent results until now. Each month or so it would move up or down a few places for each term as new sites were added to their index and it did it's dance, but now all of a sudden almost every key phrase has dropped right off the scale.

I'm kind of praying it's some temporary glitch or that it's something to do with my host coincidentally being down at the time they spidered, but I don't hold out much hope that that's the case because I think it would have just dropped me from the index altogether.

I fear that JayC is correct unfortunately, because there are loads of informational sites rather than the usual commercial sites for the phrases I've looked at so far.

I don't really want to give away the phrases I'm using, but one for example brings up on its first page links to a karate club, a legalise canabis campaign site, a model airoplane site at a free webhost amongst others. These sites are nothing to do with the search term (which is for a particular design service). They do contain those words but not the full phrase though and essentially don't have anything to do with what someone would be looking for if they typed in that phrase.

If this is the way google is going to work from now on that really sucks.

If I type 'something designer' into it, I want to find designers, not links to model airplane websites, karate clubs and legalise canabis sites.

It was much better the way it worked before (that isn't just sour grapes because my site has dropped off, but people do actually use it to look for commercial services). Perhaps they're looking to sell their paid advertising more for commercial sites now or something.

[Rich2k]

Yep google have made another update. One of my sites has dropped too.

It's called the Google dance.

[b.m.2]

Google had made a few changes lately but it could be due to a couple of things including your site being down for a bit.

What I've learned with Google is that patience is always a virtue and you normally end up where you deserve to be. If you had a high ranking and it all of the sudden fell off, chances are you'll get it back. I know it is nerve racking though.

[EthicalEpi]

Yeah, I've seen the google dance in action before, but as I say it usually just moves a few places for each phrase (there's been a gradual upward move overall over recent months).

Thanks for the glimmer of hope b.m.2. I guess I have no choice but to wait it out and see. I really hope you're right.

[nuthin]

just wait it out a bit, i know it's a hassle and you may see a drop in traffic for a while but hopefully they will roll out a good index soon.. something like we see on non-english speaking googles would be grand.
do you notice your site ranking on google.it? google.se? etc..
that *could* be a new index.. hopefully upon us soon.

[EthicalEpi]

Thanks for the tip nuthin. I didn't think of that.

I've just checked out a few of the phrases on google.it and my site is still way down the list on some of the most important phrases i tried. I can't try all of them because it would take ages, and the digitalpoint tool only allows me to check google.com

If the google.it site represents the new index, it's beginning to look like I'll just have to live with it, and perhaps do a bit more promotion and bear in mind the failings of the existing pages when I add new pages to my site.

On a positive note one of my clients is doing quite well out of the changes, so hopefully that'll give his business a bit of a boost.