Google update again?!

[mtj85]

In my case there has been a drop in ranking for some keywords, but for some not. My site is health related, but I am not selling any magical cures, nor I am giving any ill advice on serious illnesses (as I am not qualified and my morals would not allow me to either).
So in a way I understand google to try and eliminate websites that try to sell snake-oil or give random advice to people in need just to rank from ads. But there's some problems here.
For example - my site got deranked for one keyword which is profitable (from position 1 to position 9), but for other keywords that are not so profitable (and with traffic less than lets say 3000 impressions per month) there was no drop in raking. Makes me wonder - why not drop for those too? For those keyword I could give bad advice as well as I am not an authority? What is the catch here? Profit, or user experience? Be consistent, or don't do this until you are. For example if a keyword "how to cure from a specific snake bite" has only 100 hits per month (i am making these numbers up just for example), then still those 100 hits could go to a site that offers wrong advice if this algorithm is not working on non-profitable keywords.
What is more - by this "authority" thing - do small sites even have a chance? How are you suppose to be ranked better than New York Medical College in the SERPs (I am using this college just as an example). I do agree that a medical college must be a good source of advice, but in terms of authority it will always be first and you can't beat it, even though you're a specialist in the area (but you work alone). How can a person or company obtain more authority than a college or some institute? What I'm getting at here is that "small fish" will never stand a change against giants and that's not right in my opinion.

 

[fb3003]

In my case I'm starting to realize that it was a few of the links I've given my website that most likely caused my drop - not this update. I've built a few exact match links to my website from a few of my PBN sites immediately after I got the PBN sites indexed by Google, and there's a theory that this can in fact hurt your ranks. A website has to be a few weeks old before it should start linking outwards to your money site.

I'm starting to think my bad practices hurt my ranking. I was doing this like 10th-20th of July and started seeing bad effects by the end of July. I've removed those links. Will see if I pick up some ranks again. If I do this update wasn't impactful, I had just hurt myself

if you removed the link within the last 24 hours, i suggest to put it back and ride it out for the next 2 weeks. removing backlinks is a red flag for google and it shows that you have control over your backlinks.

also, was your pbn based on wordpress? if so, can you check this:
http://yourpbndomainaddress/page/100

see if it shows you your homepage, if so, your wordpress is the culprit of giving you tons of sitewide backlinks. which is negative in particular when your backlink is a exact match keyword.

let me know if this is the issue or not. check your google search console and see if you got tons of backlinks from the same pbn domain.

 

[ScreamingMidget]

Seeing a lot of natural, completely whitehat sites punished. Basically - sites that give informative, unique content are being hit.

Fast forward 20 years when Google have a better clue of what they are actually doing.

 

[mhadzer]

My main site with quality backlinks from authority sites and guest posts got hit pretty bad. But it is slowly getting back now. While my other site with PBNs remained stable.

 

[Biycchu]

friends my site visitors gose 1000, 1200 to 500 daily. can i get back my visitors ?

 

[ScreamingMidget]

friends my site visitors gose 1000, 1200 to 500 daily. can i get back my visitors ?

Well, Google at the moment are pretty much saying: Go Blackhat.

As they aren't rewarding people who take the long route.

 

[Biycchu]

Well, Google at the moment are pretty much saying: Go Blackhat.

As they aren't rewarding people who take the long route.

sir please give any blackhat seo tutorial links. I have not any idea about blackhat seo.

 

[TurboCharge]

if you removed the link within the last 24 hours, i suggest to put it back and ride it out for the next 2 weeks. removing backlinks is a red flag for google and it shows that you have control over your backlinks.

also, was your pbn based on wordpress? if so, can you check this:
yourpbndomainaddress/page/100

see if it shows you your homepage, if so, your wordpress is the culprit of giving you tons of sitewide backlinks. which is negative in particular when your backlink is a exact match keyword.

let me know if this is the issue or not. check your google search console and see if you got tons of backlinks from the same pbn domain.

Thank you for the suggestions. I removed it per this guy's analysis: diggitymarketing[dot]com/11-pbn-experiments/. This guy removed his toxic backlink and saw an increase in ranks again

When I navigate to "domain/page/100" I do indeed not land on a 404 page - instead I do see the front page, but /page/100 path remains in the URL. Is this what you were talking about? Looking at the webmaster's tool however I do not see a lot of sitewide links from this PBN domain. I see 6 - and that's because the page has 6 pages total and the link is in the sidebar as "Useful links"

This is the only domain I've linked this way from, however. I thought I'd mix my backlinks up a little and out of 20 PBN domains, this one I added the link to the sidebar for variation

Thank you!

 

[fb3003]

sir please give any blackhat seo tutorial links. I have not any idea about blackhat seo.

check https://www.blackhatworld.com (sarcasm)

 

[Deleted member 657006]

google might be showing random websites with good content , i dont think there going to be a indexing war no more everyone going to get a chance for showing there website.

i suspect that the future aswell random quilty websites shown in google.

seo optimization might be quilty and shown randomly in random poststion.

you can all argue with me but I been on hundreds of seminars and that the future random heigh quilty shown websites .

no one will be in any indexing poststion all random positions .

only paid adverts will be on postion 1 to 5

 

[ScreamingMidget]

Thank you for the suggestions. I removed it per this guy's analysis: diggitymarketing[dot]com/11-pbn-experiments/. This guy removed his toxic backlink and saw an increase in ranks again

Your ranked changed that quick?

 

[ZuppaSoup]

Thank you for the suggestions. I removed it per this guy's analysis: diggitymarketing[dot]com/11-pbn-experiments/. This guy removed his toxic backlink and saw an increase in ranks again

When I navigate to "domain/page/100" I do indeed not land on a 404 page - instead I do see the front page, but /page/100 path remains in the URL. Is this what you were talking about? Looking at the webmaster's tool however I do not see a lot of sitewide links from this PBN domain. I see 6 - and that's because the page has 6 pages total and the link is in the sidebar as "Useful links"

This is the only domain I've linked this way from, however. I thought I'd mix my backlinks up a little and out of 20 PBN domains, this one I added the link to the sidebar for variation

Thank you!

I think it shouldn't be a problem as long as your canonical is right.

 

[mtj85]

In my case there has been a drop in ranking for some keywords, but for some not. My site is health related, but I am not selling any magical cures, nor I am giving any ill advice on serious illnesses (as I am not qualified and my morals would not allow me to either).
So in a way I understand google to try and eliminate websites that try to sell snake-oil or give random advice to people in need just to rank from ads. But there's some problems here.
For example - my site got deranked for one keyword which is profitable (from position 1 to position 9), but for other keywords that are not so profitable (and with traffic less than lets say 3000 impressions per month) there was no drop in raking. Makes me wonder - why not drop for those too? For those keyword I could give bad advice as well as I am not an authority? What is the catch here? Profit, or user experience? Be consistent, or don't do this until you are. For example if a keyword "how to cure from a specific snake bite" has only 100 hits per month (i am making these numbers up just for example), then still those 100 hits could go to a site that offers wrong advice if this algorithm is not working on non-profitable keywords.
What is more - by this "authority" thing - do small sites even have a chance? How are you suppose to be ranked better than New York Medical College in the SERPs (I am using this college just as an example). I do agree that a medical college must be a good source of advice, but in terms of authority it will always be first and you can't beat it, even though you're a specialist in the area (but you work alone). How can a person or company obtain more authority than a college or some institute? What I'm getting at here is that "small fish" will never stand a change against giants and that's not right in my opinion.

So what's more for 1 profitable keyword i lost my 1st position ranking and fell down to be rank 6 now. But the strange thing is that now "NY health institute" and some other highly credible websites are before me in SERPs (which I really can't argue to be honest because these sites are far more credible than mine), but then again I am ranked before medindia.com, which is also much more credible site than mine. But why/how? By "authority" rationale my website probably wouldn't rank in top 100 for this keyword, to be honest. Why ranking 6 now? You know, people sometime also visit #2,3,4,5,6,7 ranked website for a particular keyword... I don't get the logic behind it. It's like they only want to partially "fixed" the serps, and only for profitable keywords.
So it's really not quality update for users, but rather an update for profitable keywords, where they prefer the big brands.

Also I'm seeing some wild websites now ranking before me for specific keywords. Sites that came out of no-where, having only 20 indexed pages or so. Some private clinics also now rank high. It's a mess to be honest.

 

[fb3003]

Thank you for the suggestions. I removed it per this guy's analysis: diggitymarketing[dot]com/11-pbn-experiments/. This guy removed his toxic backlink and saw an increase in ranks again

When I navigate to "domain/page/100" I do indeed not land on a 404 page - instead I do see the front page, but /page/100 path remains in the URL. Is this what you were talking about? Looking at the webmaster's tool however I do not see a lot of sitewide links from this PBN domain. I see 6 - and that's because the page has 6 pages total and the link is in the sidebar as "Useful links"

This is the only domain I've linked this way from, however. I thought I'd mix my backlinks up a little and out of 20 PBN domains, this one I added the link to the sidebar for variation

Thank you!

i cant argue with what matt has said on that page or any of his other advice. he knows his stuff.
where on that link do you see that removing back link gets you back to ok level? i could not find it.

as for /page/100 , yes, i think it is a new wordpress bug. but i think your primary culprit was linking out too early

 

[Deleted member 657006]

i cant argue with what matt has said on that page or any of his other advice. he knows his stuff.
where on that link do you see that removing back link gets you back to ok level? i could not find it.

as for /page/100 , yes, i think it is a new wordpress bug. but i think your primary culprit was linking out too early

wouldn't even suprise me if the whole indexing problam was wp fault

 

[fb3003]

wouldn't even suprise me if the whole indexing problam was wp fault

i am interested to know if others who have the latest version wordpress, see their home page, when they put /page/100 at end of their url

updated: fuck me!!! just checked my money site, and it is set on auto wordpress update, and it has this issue. basically i put /page/100 or /page/200 or anyother number after my url, it shows my home page. duplicate content issue. however, these pages do not show up in my sitemap that get generated by yoast or when i do site:domain.com/page

so doubt wordpress could be the cause of all of these ranking issues.

 

[ScreamingMidget]

i am interested to know if others who have the latest version wordpress, see their home page, when they put /page/100 at end of their url

I have the latest version and get an error not found.

 

[ZuppaSoup]

i am interested to know if others who have the latest version wordpress, see their home page, when they put /page/100 at end of their url

I have the latest version and get an error not found.

I got 404 too. Try create 404.php if you're redirected to or shown homepage

 

[jroc66]

So what's more for 1 profitable keyword i lost my 1st position ranking and fell down to be rank 6 now. But the strange thing is that now "NY health institute" and some other highly credible websites are before me in SERPs (which I really can't argue to be honest because these sites are far more credible than mine), but then again I am ranked before medindia.com, which is also much more credible site than mine. But why/how? By "authority" rationale my website probably wouldn't rank in top 100 for this keyword, to be honest. Why ranking 6 now? You know, people sometime also visit #2,3,4,5,6,7 ranked website for a particular keyword... I don't get the logic behind it. It's like they only want to partially "fixed" the serps, and only for profitable keywords.
So it's really not quality update for users, but rather an update for profitable keywords, where they prefer the big brands.

Also I'm seeing some wild websites now ranking before me for specific keywords. Sites that came out of no-where, having only 20 indexed pages or so. Some private clinics also now rank high. It's a mess to be honest.

Yeah I agree with everything you've been saying in this thread. It appears they are targeting health websites that are making money but don't have the high authority like WebMD, Healthline, PubMed, Examine, etc. I think they are looking carefully at who is running the website and whether it has a lot of medical experts behind it. But for them to say it's about user experience, I don't think that's true at all.

I run a high-quality health website by myself and have been hit by about 30%. I'm a specialist/expert in a niche area and provide well-researched info, but I feel like I can't even compete with the "top dogs" anymore. I've searched for some keywords and I also see supplement companies as the first result. It's simply a product page with hardly any good, unbiased info. So from what I see, Google is rewarding completely unbiased websites that have a lot of authority, and then rewarding companies that are strictly selling products. My website has lot of well-research info, but then I also link to supplements on Amazon and sell a few of my own supplements. I have some credentials but I'm not a doctor. So I'm sort of "in between". It makes me think that I should now transition completely into an ecommerce website. Because I see many websites ahead of me simply selling supplements and their content isn't as good as mine and it's clearly just a way to sell their supplements. It's sad to see. This is the first time I've been affected by one of these changes. I've been making my content better and better over the years and traffic has always increased. Not anymore...

 

[fb3003]

I got 404 too. Try create 404.php if you're redirected to or shown homepage

i have 404 page. if you type /page/apple after the url, i get the 404 page. but when it is a number, it shows your home page