HOW is this even possible?

P

powpew

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While monitoring today one of my client's main keyword on the first page, I have witnessed something entirely inexplicable.

Basically one of my client's competitor who was positioned till few moments ago #3 on the firs page for the last 1.5-2 years, moved to #2 today, and then one hour later it's #1 above Wikipedia.

Ok, you would think it is some amazing SEO being done on the website but I did not observe any new links made to that website. I went for a manual inspection and what I saw left me entirely perplexed. Today they have been changing the look and feel of their website, and the developers put a nofollow, noindex meta on the website. So guess what, the website is now displaying on the first page of G like this "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" and although, the change of the website template seems to be over the meta noindex has not been removed by the developers yet.

My only question, is what the heck is going on? Any ideas?
 
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Did you clear your cookies before checking this SERP? Google may be showing you customized results (I know it usually shows me sites I've visited before on the first page...which can be super annoying). Open up a fresh "Incognito" Chrome window and see if the result is the same.
 
mrpasta said:
Did you clear your cookies before checking this SERP? Google may be showing you customized results (I know it usually shows me sites I've visited before on the first page...which can be super annoying). Open up a fresh "Incognito" Chrome window and see if the result is the same.
Click to expand...

Of course I did that :) It's #1
 
I have seen this also. I guess what's happening is that the meta description and meta keywords is being robot txt out from the equation, forcing the search engines to index the site from other factors such as title, content ect. I know that meta description is an important element, I also know that G has disregarded the meta keywords tag... This one has me confused also.

This method could be useful if you have duplicate meta descriptions?

I agree... Keep an eye on its serp.
 
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linksmaster said:
If the robots.txt is blocking something or they put their site in maintanence mode then the decription will be shown like that.

It might be a google dance too, wait for one or two weeks to decide anything on ranking.
Click to expand...

I don't know what to think. What worries me even more is that about a month ago I decided to change the business purpose of one of my websites. So I deleted all the content, and put a noindex, nofollow meta on the domain to wait for google to de-index it and then build it up from scratch.

Now, I went back to see if it's de-indexed and in all honesty f*ck G but that website of mine is ranking higher than before (went up 3 positions in an uncompetitive niche) and not a single page has been deindexed from G, although there is no more content on it.
 
Yeah, maybe the site has a problem with duplicate/over-optimized tags without them knowing it. Keep a close eye on it for the next week to see if they change it back and then see how it affects their ranking.
 
Or, may be they are SEOing their backlinks, ie web 2.0s - or may be they did a 301?

what sort of backlinks do they have?
 
powpew said:
While monitoring today one of my client's main keyword on the first page, I have witnessed something entirely inexplicable.

Basically one of my client's competitor who was positioned till few moments ago #3 on the firs page for the last 1.5-2 years, moved to #2 today, and then one hour later it's #1 above Wikipedia.

Ok, you would think it is some amazing SEO being done on the website but I did not observe any new links made to that website. I went for a manual inspection and what I saw left me entirely perplexed. Today they have been changing the look and feel of their website, and the developers put a nofollow, noindex meta on the website. So guess what, the website is now displaying on the first page of G like this "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" and although, the change of the website template seems to be over the meta noindex has not been removed by the developers yet.

My only question, is what the heck is going on? Any ideas?
Click to expand...

The part I bolded, I'm seeing a lot lately. Page 1 for excellent keywords and they have that robot description in the serps. Not a clue as to what is going on.
 
lozsta said:
I have seen this also. I guess what's happening is that the meta description and meta keywords is being robot txt out from the equation, forcing the search engines to index the site from other factors such as title, content ect.
Click to expand...
That's an interesting theory. You could be right.
 
They probably lost some of their backlinks, or G decremented some of their backlinks.....not all sites you see on PR1 on Google are 100% clean....I know some sites that use old domain redirection techniques just to appear within the organic listing
 
Google is rolling out another update. Many SEO blogs have posted about it.
 
redrubies said:
The part I bolded, I'm seeing a lot lately. Page 1 for excellent keywords and they have that robot description in the serps. Not a clue as to what is going on.
Click to expand...

Yeah, now I realize it is some kind of retarded G ranking loop, since one of my websites is #2 for the main keyword with no content but with same description "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt"

36 hours passed, their website is still ranked #1 and with a nofollow, noindex meta in the source code .. this sh*t makes no sense to me whatsoever
 
powpew said:
Yeah, now I realize it is some kind of retarded G ranking loop, since one of my websites is #2 for the main keyword with no content but with same description "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt"

36 hours passed, their website is still ranked #1 and with a nofollow, noindex meta in the source code .. this sh*t makes no sense to me whatsoever
Click to expand...

I know what you mean. I can't figure it out either.
 
anyone figure it out im paying to rank my site on first page. just an fyi
 
This n00by did a quick search on G and learned that by using noindex you can avoid duplicate content being indexed. Also learned that, if I understand it correctly, it is possible to lose ranking by having duplicate on your own site.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-hurting-my-seo-ranking-if-robots-txt-is-forbidden

Also, it seems possible to lose "ranking juice" by having content not related to what google thinks the site is about. Noindex and nofollow tags seem to help in concentrating (laser targeting) the "link juice" you already have.

I am not saying the above is true, it is just what a quick search taught this newbie. Please ignore as you see fit. :)
 
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