Just add to my previous post, some of my posts did recover simply by refreshing the content. Meaning updating the H1/H2 titles and editing some text, even if nothing significant has changed regarding the promoted product in that post. Just to make google think that the post is up to date and still relevant. You have nothing to lose by updating the articles that lost ranking, resubmit them for indexing (page has changed in GSC) and see what will happen. If it works you should see some movement within a few days. That should tell you if you're on the right track. All the best!
Sudden Ranked Drop? Google Algo Update?
- Thread starter wawangjan
- Start date
Just add to my previous post, some of my posts did recover simply by refreshing the content. Meaning updating the H1/H2 titles and editing some text, even if nothing significant has changed regarding the promoted product in that post. Just to make google think that the post is up to date and still relevant. You have nothing to lose by updating the articles that lost ranking, resubmit them for indexing (page has changed in GSC) and see what will happen. If it works you should see some movement within a few days. That should tell you if you're on the right track. All the best!
fasttrak
Elite Member
- Sep 12, 2016
- 3,514
- 3,986
Damn, that is bad news and probably means that I am a couple of days behind you and should expect to tank again.
Exactly what I am doing. Created another authority site and starting a new one tomorrow. I did have an old authority site that was hit in 2018 come back to life this week (I have made no changes). So the more sites the better, then when a site gets hit, you can likely expect it to come back again in the future, and keep the revenue fairly even.
I actually did the same check myself today and had the exact same results. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. Plus I have rich snippets showing in the 'People also ask' box on page 1, but the page they link to, has gone from page 1 to page unknown. Again, makes no sense, is it penalised or not? Talk about mixed messages!
tammyblogger
Junior Member
- Aug 6, 2013
- 171
- 77
Yes, it is so frustrating and you are so right about the mixed messages, I am sitting thinking to myself is this going to come back out in a couple of weeks again and go through the whole process again, rank for few weeks then back out again. I think it's time to leave them and see what happens and build on other sites and like you said some of them just appear out of the blue and start ranking again.
I worry about how this is all going and what 2020 will bring us with google, it's just an absolute mess, full of youtube and googles books or some other type of web 2.
The decline in traffic for so many people these days is worrying. Keep me posted with your site, I hope you manage to stay, but nowadays I look at sites and think we are all on short borrowed time more so than ever before, the days of ranking for years for many keywords may be gone I hope I am wrong and maybe I'm just peeved as I'm back out again.
More authority sites and testing I think is deffo the way to go. I don't think it's over I think we just need to figure out what the heck it's looking for and adapt .....
assaultclass
BANNED
- Oct 18, 2018
- 371
- 210
You don't get messages for algorithmic penalties. Google will only send you a message if you have a manual penalty.
JoachimvR
Power Member
- Feb 21, 2014
- 776
- 413
Same for me, I don't see any improvements in traffic/rankings yet neither.
However, the best thing to do is wait indeed. I can't imagine they keep it this way, the SERPs are an absolute mess at the moment.
That is the whole point of this update, it's a very strange one. These are not regular penalties as then they would completely remove it from the index, unless it's an algo penalty.
But a normal algo penalty does not make any sense neither in my eyes, since some rankings are still there at #1, some are down 50+ spots and some are vanished.
My guts are telling me that they somehow messed things up hugely, but on the other hand it's Google. So it won't surprise me anymore if they just leave it like this.
At the moment the best thing you can do is just wait and work on other projects in the mean time.
wawangjan
Regular Member
- Feb 25, 2012
- 251
- 148
guys maybe this is the reason : https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/check-your-expired-domain-age.1189543/
new_don
Regular Member
- Jan 12, 2018
- 442
- 41
same here do not know what to do. I am down around 60-70%
It is not Anchor text as mentioned above, at least not off page anchors since the only site that got hit for us was brand new (5 months old) and had just 3 links targeting the brand name of the site that is not a commercial acnhor.
2/3 of ranks are gone but on a daily basis some jump into 30-60 in again, very few into the top 10 again, 3 back to 1. Out of the 1/3 that stayed 1-10 after this event per day 1-2 rush down to 20-30. Overall pages for this project are 450. Crawling in Search Console stays stable at 50 per day avg. Contents overall are up to date. Site gets 4-7 fresh posts per week.
2/3 of ranks are gone but on a daily basis some jump into 30-60 in again, very few into the top 10 again, 3 back to 1. Out of the 1/3 that stayed 1-10 after this event per day 1-2 rush down to 20-30. Overall pages for this project are 450. Crawling in Search Console stays stable at 50 per day avg. Contents overall are up to date. Site gets 4-7 fresh posts per week.
bagle
Registered Member
- Nov 7, 2019
- 55
- 5
In my case: I regged a new domain for my project. Someone regged the domain in 2013 to redirect to the "another language domain". But the forwarding was stopped it in 2017.
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TomTheCat
Elite Member
- Oct 27, 2019
- 2,372
- 2,768
Google, if you are reading this, I let you know that my websites are fine, but when I need to search something relevant, I'm tired of having 6 books.google.com URLs in top 10! #OccupyGoogle
soa0611
Elite Member
- Apr 20, 2015
- 2,790
- 2,537
i see song lyrics sites instead of relevant ones
fasttrak
Elite Member
- Sep 12, 2016
- 3,514
- 3,986
At the moment, 'I see dead people'!
I have a bunch of sites regaining the previous SERPS, and a bunch more doing sod all.
I wondered if it was Anchor related as my main KW on 1 authority site has disappeared from SERPS but the site is still showing in 'people also ask' box on page one. The exact KW is used on a couple of big sites, site wide. So I figured this could be the issue. However, I have another site using the same method and it has bounced back this week, so it can't be that....
Going to sit and wait a bit more.
tammyblogger
Junior Member
- Aug 6, 2013
- 171
- 77
It's the waiting that's the frustrating part for us all, it's like fumbling around in the dark looking for the light switch! Like fast-track said it seems to be so many dead sites ranking these days in a whole lot of niches, full of google books, youtube,web2s, 1-page articles, amazon books, I even have sites like twubs for hashtags where people have made 1 hashtag and never came back in years and it's now ranking for 13,000 volume on page 1 at no3 ?? How can that possibly be?
it's pulling descriptions and ranking in the wrong sections.
I 100% think its testing still and hence why we have all these dead sites out as I remember in the past when updates in my niche when an update was ongoing it filled all the results with twitters and facebooks and as soon as the update was over they all disappeared, so my gut tells me this is the same thing, but it is taking so much longer and so many casualties while it does it.
My only hope is that they realise they are going to lose traffic as it is a matter of time before surfers get fed up with it and move on, especially in the adult niche what adult surfer wants to see a list of google books when he searches out his fetish?
Google is always-on about giving a good user experience but how the heck is this pile of crap giving users a good experience? To me, it would be giving them more of a headache and making them head to bing. ( This is what I hope)
I don't think this will last I do think they know it's an absolute mess and whatever they have tried to do is not working but how long can we all hold out?
I have been analysing what is ranking in amongst these dead sites and making web 2s similar to test them.
Authority sites like amazon, etc seem unaffected but that was always the way with updates but these dead sites it's pulling through shows me it is still in the process of updating
I am in and out like a yoyo and I am now at a stage where I think even if my 2 sites come back I am still living in tender hooks as to whether they will get pulled again in a few weeks,
So what do we do? Where do we all go from here? We wait for a glimmer of hope and continue to refresh the results and keep our fingers crossed -
My wish for 2020 is that some other search engine takes them out and becomes better than them, and if they keep these results like this maybe that would happen ( i can wish)
I also wanted to say some of the cleverest people are on this forum and no matter what happens we always find a workaround and we will again!
it's pulling descriptions and ranking in the wrong sections.
I 100% think its testing still and hence why we have all these dead sites out as I remember in the past when updates in my niche when an update was ongoing it filled all the results with twitters and facebooks and as soon as the update was over they all disappeared, so my gut tells me this is the same thing, but it is taking so much longer and so many casualties while it does it.
My only hope is that they realise they are going to lose traffic as it is a matter of time before surfers get fed up with it and move on, especially in the adult niche what adult surfer wants to see a list of google books when he searches out his fetish?
Google is always-on about giving a good user experience but how the heck is this pile of crap giving users a good experience? To me, it would be giving them more of a headache and making them head to bing. ( This is what I hope)
I don't think this will last I do think they know it's an absolute mess and whatever they have tried to do is not working but how long can we all hold out?
I have been analysing what is ranking in amongst these dead sites and making web 2s similar to test them.
Authority sites like amazon, etc seem unaffected but that was always the way with updates but these dead sites it's pulling through shows me it is still in the process of updating
I am in and out like a yoyo and I am now at a stage where I think even if my 2 sites come back I am still living in tender hooks as to whether they will get pulled again in a few weeks,
So what do we do? Where do we all go from here? We wait for a glimmer of hope and continue to refresh the results and keep our fingers crossed -
My wish for 2020 is that some other search engine takes them out and becomes better than them, and if they keep these results like this maybe that would happen ( i can wish)
I also wanted to say some of the cleverest people are on this forum and no matter what happens we always find a workaround and we will again!
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tammyblogger
Junior Member
- Aug 6, 2013
- 171
- 77
Yikes, i'm never recovering
Mine did the same very similar to this and did come back and then left again last night, don't lose hope just yet! But get building new sites and leave this one be, they always tend to come back out at some point.