Sudden Ranked Drop? Google Algo Update?

Folks, I just want to give some of you a little hope here, 2 of my biggest sites were totally wiped out in November, 1 semi returned last week, the other 1 has arrived back tonight in all its old rankings, it really is a wait and see game this, I thought I had lost that site forever. Hang in there and wait it out i was hit on November 4th so just over 4 weeks and both are back and back to where they ranked before...

That's good to know! I also got hit on November 4th but my site has still not recovered :/
 
This includes if you are 301'ing old pages to the homepage on an expired domain.





Can we please cut the conspiracy stuff? There is no Google conspiracy. At all. They don't randomly penalize sites. They aren't checking chrome. They aren't trying to force a few SEO's to use google ads. They are not trying to make some extra cash for Christmas as some have said. Google's parent company, Alphabet has $117 billion in cash. Well, sort of. That's what they say on the web for shock value.

They actually have $148 billion in what we call "current assets", which is an asset that can be liquidized in 1 year or less. Actual cash they have $16 billion, so they won't go hungry this week however.

Now, with that in mind..

Does anyone of sane mind really believe a company with that level of assets is instructing the engineers of their core business to make radical changes so they can get a bit of extra cash for Christmas? Or maybe to get a few more businesses to sign up for google ads. It's just utterly ridiculous. Their decisions are made with careful consideration with the goal of improving their core product to maintain their market share. They aren't even attempting to increase their market share. It's not increased for over a decade, and is a little lower than it was 10 years ago. Their sole goal is to maintain the dominant position by making sure people are happy. That is their mission. If they fail in that mission they are done. They would not fuck around with the serps to drum up a little more ads business. Great move. Risk your core product just to get a few more small businesses to buy ads.

Now please, folks. Enough of the conspiracy stuff, it's just embarrassing to read.

We are all just trying to work out what's going on in this update. All my sites and sites I'm responsible for have continued to grow. I've never actually been hit with a google update, but I do try and stay ahead of the curve by understanding each update so I can see the direction they are moving in.
You totally underestimate the Google VS SEO industry rivalry. They pretty often DO make anti-SEO updates for the purposes you mention. People bring money into the link building business. Several big link sellers even managed to get into the recent Inc. 5000 list. And this is the money that could be spent on ads.
Don't tell me Google doesn't care. I'm pretty much sure that some of their employees from anti-spam department or whatever it's called are even monitoring bhw.
 
All my sites had contact us, privacy policy, disclaimer, about us and other legal pages. Still half of them got hit. Websites also have ssl certificate.

Would you mind if I took a look at your site? I'm still 99% sure this is quality/EAT related.
 
Nothing really, one thing I did start doing was redirecting some of its inner pages to another site and that other site came out and ranked, it was just a test with a few inner pages to see whether the other site would rank to give me an indication of a temp move until I worked things out. I honestly thought it was gone.

When it fist tanked I did mess about with site speed and changed the theme ( as id always wanted to change it but was scared to) So I took that opportunity to do it other than that I did nothing. I have not touched it in the last 2 weeks really.

OHH One thing that did happen was I had a disavow file on it as I had had 2 negative SEO attacks, and yesterday I removed the disavow file and uploaded a black file and tonight my site is back, so I don't know if anything to do with that as that's a bit quick is it not?



What I have noticed is if you have been hit after waiting it out the redirect option does still work as it did for me so at least perhaps some options going forward even if just for a temp fix

I honestly feel there is either umpteen algorithms penalizing different sites for different things so there is not a one size fits all going on, hence why no one can work it out, or its just testing with other sites and I bet half the folks on here will find their sites back in next week or so...

That is good to know as we seem to have both been hit at the same time. I am still waiting for mine to bounce back.

Interesting about the disavow file, what do you mean by a 'black file'?

I also tweaked a few things to get my load time down as far as I could for all the sites.
 
I just notice it today.

From Ranking

1 > 55
5 > 44
6 > No where.

No penalty issue.
No on page errors.

First week of dec, i just disavow spammy links and adult link site.

What could be the reason?
Dont use disavow file unless google sends you any penalty
 
For me, it's completely different. All sites have spikes :) General niche

2019-12-21-09-53-53.jpg
 
For me, it's completely different. All sites have spikes :) General niche
Not bad, not bad.

New domains or auction domains?
What kind of links did you use? PBNs or something else?
 
15 sites, no impact at all from this update. I use 301's on some sites. No drops. Other sites are full blown PBN's (my own), niche edits and guest posts. No impact at all.

Guess im lucky guys.. good luck with the recovery process
 
Not sure if I can say this here, but the PBN in my signature :D :)

CTR is a lot better than in November. A lot.

The domain was brand new :)
Just PBNs or niche edits and other stuff too?
What about anchors?
I had just one site penalized in this update, expired domain, but the new anchors I used were a bit overoptimized.
But no improvements on my other sites either, so I'm curious what you are doing better.

Thanks
 
Just PBNs or niche edits and other stuff too?
What about anchors?
I had just one site penalized in this update, expired domain, but the new anchors I used were a bit overoptimized.
But no improvements on my other sites either, so I'm curious what you are doing better.

Thanks

Just PBN.

Each anchor is completely different. I don't have 2 similar anchors, but all keyword related.

No idea actually what I did, but I got a ranking bomb this week, many 20k+ volume keywords suddenly ranked top 5. All I did was build ~35 PBN links.
 
For me, it's completely different. All sites have spikes :) General niche

2019-12-21-09-53-53.jpg

how come for me is impression actually more than u extra 20k + yet my click is less than yours just 9k
actually I check Dec first week big drop for me ....
 
how come for me is impression actually more than u extra 20k + yet my click is less than yours just 9k
actually I check Dec first week big drop for me ....
Then you need to work on your meta description and title tag to improve your CTR. Higher ranking also have higher CTR as well.
 
Its funny how people are trying to jump into conclusions saying "Oh, it has something to do with expired domains" or "Its because of 301s redirects". No, its not. Stop misleading people. The truth is nobody has a clue what is going on. Only Google themselves know (well, maybe) and they keep silence like always.

I had all kinda websites with expired domains, fresh domains, 301 redirects and without, different niches, on different hosting, with SSL or without, with tons of content and with only 5 pages etc. etc. they randomly got hit. Even two sites I didn't build a single backlink to got hit. There is nothing in common...just read through all the thread and you will find it.
Yeah, it's better if we all just shut the f up about everything, right? Not try and figure out if there's a correlation between everyone getting hit. Ridiculous.

We aren't saying "X is definitely the problem", all I'm saying is that FOR ME, the only site and page that hot hit had a 301, none else got hit.

No shit we don't know exactly what the issue is, but if all the members that got hit used 301s, we could maybe figure it out. (Yes, I know it might not be 301s, just an example)
 
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Lol, I just looked at one old website I rebuilt on an expired domain, I restored old pages and wrote one post. These are the stats for that one post:

upload_2019-12-21_12-22-13.png
 
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