Sudden Ranked Drop? Google Algo Update?

[Marneus74]

Oh good, so probably he can fix this mobile indexing problem, or at least I hope so

I really hope so too

 

[ResistanceX]

i lost 80% of my traffic started yesterday..i think this update come with couple phase...in late november 2019 im noticing slight drop (20-30%) but yesterday is the huge one...my traffic drop almost like my website got hit by manual pinalty

Exactly the same here...

 

[tammyblogger]

Just a follow-up, my second site arrived back tonight my biggest of the two. I suspected this was going to happen as last time was a week between them coming back this time again it's roughly the same. So I am seeing a pattern here so if my prediction is right they will both depart at the end of this month again and this trend will continue in for 2 weeks out for 2 weeks... I hope I 'm wrong and they just stay put, but I have another site seems to follow this 2 weeks in 2-week out-trend as well.

I honestly don't get this at all. Anyway I am back for now so will see what happens

My 2 sites i refer to were pulled out on Nov 7th update

 

[fasttrak]

Just a follow-up, my second site arrived back tonight my biggest of the two. I suspected this was going to happen as last time was a week between them coming back this time again it's roughly the same. So I am seeing a pattern here so if my prediction is right they will both depart at the end of this month again and this trend will continue in for 2 weeks out for 2 weeks... I hope I 'm wrong and they just stay put, but I have another site seems to follow this 2 weeks in 2-week out-trend as well.

I honestly don't get this at all. Anyway I am back for now so will see what happens

My 2 sites i refer to were pulled out on Nov 7th update

Good news on that one and hopefully the others come back in and the cycle stops there!

 

[tammyblogger]

Good news on that one and hopefully the others come back in and the cycle stops there!

Yes, I was very happy to see my big site back tonight but you know its one of those you are scared to get too excited in case you get a slap again.

I am one of the people who built all my sandcastles on googles beach but since this has al happened I have been exploring new ways for traffic. This was the awakening I really needed. Will keep you posted, hope it stays put now, I am wondering whether I should do any work with it ie add some new content or wait for a bit and see what happens?

Hope that your sites are still gaining momentum ;-))

 

[fasttrak]

Yes, I was very happy to see my big site back tonight but you know its one of those you are scared to get too excited in case you get a slap again.

I am one of the people who built all my sandcastles on googles beach but since this has al happened I have been exploring new ways for traffic. This was the awakening I really needed.

I have been checking out Pinterest lately, just not enough time to really get into it. Results are promising so far.

Will keep you posted, hope it stays put now, I am wondering whether I should do any work with it ie add some new content or wait for a bit and see what happens?

I am in the exact same boat. Leaving it as is for a while, building content but not publishing on those sites.

Hope that your sites are still gaining momentum ;-))

They are all doing well again now, but your experience has me a bit worried. Definitely not counting my chickens just yet.

 

[bahus]

No, 0 link, we always wait at least 6 months before building links. So it's 100% clean as far as links are concerned.
As far as articles quality is concerned, to be honest, out of my 40+ websites, this is certainly the one with the best possible content. Super informative, writen for the visitor with a huge KW research...

So confusing on why it dropped ...
What we notice :
- Less and less mobile friendly pages on GSC (whereas normal indexing is fine and 0 error).
- When I run checks of rendering on mobile from https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly?id=IsNZ8bbGS0sZ5vC8t2VApg page des not look fine at all
- When I check site:monsite.com on google, it only shows a few pages (11 on 57)

....let's wait and see...

Interesting, knowing that you have 0 links it's pretty safe to assume that one element of this update targets on-page SEO, I can't think of anything else.
I don't have issues with indexing or deindexing, all pages are mobile friendly and when I check site:mysite.com on google it shows the same number of pages as in GSC. My problem is that I didn't lose ranking it's the same as a few weeks or months ago, vary minimal movement, however, for reason, I lost traffic and GSC shows less impressions and clicks than before Jan. 7th. Makes no sense.

Is your website a review type of website targeting 'best ...'?

 

[Florian67X]

Interesting, knowing that you have 0 links it's pretty safe to assume that one element of this update targets on-page SEO, I can't think of anything else.
I don't have issues with indexing or deindexing, all pages are mobile friendly and when I check site:mysite.com on google it shows the same number of pages as in GSC. My problem is that I didn't lose ranking it's the same as a few weeks or months ago, vary minimal movement, however, for reason, I lost traffic and GSC shows less impressions and clicks than before Jan. 7th. Makes no sense.

Is your website a review type of website targeting 'best ...'?

Yes it's a review type with informative content + reviews + best

 

[assaultclass]

Interesting, knowing that you have 0 links it's pretty safe to assume that one element of this update targets on-page SEO, I can't think of anything else.
I don't have issues with indexing or deindexing, all pages are mobile friendly and when I check site:mysite.com on google it shows the same number of pages as in GSC. My problem is that I didn't lose ranking it's the same as a few weeks or months ago, vary minimal movement, however, for reason, I lost traffic and GSC shows less impressions and clicks than before Jan. 7th. Makes no sense.

Is your website a review type of website targeting 'best ...'?

That's because you lost rankings for keywords you're not tracking so you don't know about them. Plug your site into ahrefs and you'll see the rankings you thought you didn't lose.

 

[jyciap11]

Just a follow-up, my second site arrived back tonight my biggest of the two. I suspected this was going to happen as last time was a week between them coming back this time again it's roughly the same. So I am seeing a pattern here so if my prediction is right they will both depart at the end of this month again and this trend will continue in for 2 weeks out for 2 weeks... I hope I 'm wrong and they just stay put, but I have another site seems to follow this 2 weeks in 2-week out-trend as well.

I honestly don't get this at all. Anyway I am back for now so will see what happens

My 2 sites i refer to were pulled out on Nov 7th update

great news! I have a question, the site that came back, had 0 visits during the penalty?

 

[bahus]

Yes it's a review type with informative content + reviews + best

There you go, I'm pretty sure that among other things they target with the latest update(s) are review websites. Maybe because lately there were too many of them popping up using the same format. Mine that lost traffic but not ranking is a review site but not the typical one most people are doing. In the past, Google did target affiliate websites but mine was never affected. I guess maybe this time they took it a bit forward.

It time to do some rewriting, twist things around and see how it goes. Thank you for your replies, they were really helpful, a lot of people complain but never give any details so sometimes it's hard to come to a conclusion.

 

[jrengjreng]

There you go, I'm pretty sure that among other things they target with the latest update(s) are review websites.

E commerce site also got hit

i have a feeling that this update is about onsite factor not offsite (links) ,is it possible that this update is another follow up from previous one (minus november update, nov update im suspecting links factor) like starting from EAT algo and the final is during 14 jan update

all my site is white hat, i mean no black hat activity at all..during the rolled EAT algo is when i saw decline in traffic but only small decline maybe because i got strong back links (medium competition/difficulty)..during nov update it didn't effect me at all (that's why im suspected nov is about links i have literally natural links)

But all my site has something in common (flaw criteria in EAT) like authorship, capabilities expertise

 

[bahus]

That's because you lost rankings for keywords you're not tracking so you don't know about them. Plug your site into ahrefs and you'll see the rankings you thought you didn't lose.

Here you go, example from one URL, ranking, clicks, and impressions Jan 6th vs Jan 8th. Ranking stable and clicks, and impressions are drastically lower. Does it make sense?

​

 

[bahus]

E commerce site also got hit

I don't know what kind of e-commerce site you have so I'll be guessing. Look if it has some similarities with a review site. Or maybe it doesn't have good product descriptions or google doesn't like the format. If none of the above apply, then take a look at your links and anchor text if you built any in the past year or so. Sometimes Google can hit a website for links that were built years ago.
These are the three things that come to my mind but I could be totally wrong. I've never dealt with e-commerce sites so it's hard for me to suggest something.

 

[Florian67X]

There you go, I'm pretty sure that among other things they target with the latest update(s) are review websites. Maybe because lately there were too many of them popping up using the same format. Mine that lost traffic but not ranking is a review site but not the typical one most people are doing. In the past, Google did target affiliate websites but mine was never affected. I guess maybe this time they took it a bit forward.

It time to do some rewriting, twist things around and see how it goes. Thank you for your replies, they were really helpful, a lot of people complain but never give any details so sometimes it's hard to come to a conclusion.

I'm really not sure about the fact that they target affiliate / review sites.

I have big sites (200k + visitors / month) that have done super super well with the last update and they are review/best/affiliate sites.
I honestly strongly doubt they target affiliate sites...otherwise, TONS of websites would have collapsed :/

 

[assaultclass]

Here you go, example from one URL, ranking, clicks, and impressions Jan 6th vs Jan 8th. Ranking stable and clicks, and impressions are drastically lower. Does it make sense?

View attachment 126500​

Like I said, check your Ahrefs keyword rankings, and then it will make sense.

 

[soa0611]

Today there are only big news sites (ilounge, the sun) on my kw instead of my comperitors in top10 Google you are drunk, go sleep

 

[t2van]

I have been checking out Pinterest lately, just not enough time to really get into it. Results are promising so far.

That was me when I was testing it I think I had 12 pins on there and just couldn't be arsed to go through it. Anyway start of 2018 I decided to just hire a VA from upwork and I got her to do it. She pinned everything as I wanted and then created a pile of other boards and cross pinned again (it's all products and blogs) it stands today at 227pins I think...

Since doing that low season I get 12k views a month high season it's 33k! It cost me less than $20 for her to do it all and I've not touched it since - it needs updating again I get a fair bit of traffic to the blog however for the shop as I'm based in the UK and I don't ship out to the US I'm loosing out to a massive audience share 18.9% for US vs 6.5% UK ... so yeah allocate some time for it!!

 

[bahus]

I'm really not sure about the fact that they target affiliate / review sites.

I have big sites (200k + visitors / month) that have done super super well with the last update and they are review/best/affiliate sites.
I honestly strongly doubt they target affiliate sites...otherwise, TONS of websites would have collapsed :/

There is another possibility if they don't target specific websites they could have changed the way a website ranks for keyword(s), either way, part of the update has something to do with on-page SEO and how keywords are used.

 

[fasttrak]

That was me when I was testing it I think I had 12 pins on there and just couldn't be arsed to go through it. Anyway start of 2018 I decided to just hire a VA from upwork and I got her to do it. She pinned everything as I wanted and then created a pile of other boards and cross pinned again (it's all products and blogs) it stands today at 227pins I think...

Since doing that low season I get 12k views a month high season it's 33k! It cost me less than $20 for her to do it all and I've not touched it since - it needs updating again I get a fair bit of traffic to the blog however for the shop as I'm based in the UK and I don't ship out to the US I'm loosing out to a massive audience share 18.9% for US vs 6.5% UK ... so yeah allocate some time for it!!

The site I have dabbled with gets 200k monthly Pinterest views and a reasonable amount of click throughs to the site. I still find the concept of Pinterest a bit alien, as all I can think is, why would anyone bother, but obviously a lot of people do. I need to create pins for all of the sites information articles as I see the traffic as not particularly buying traffic, but I hope to get clicks to buying articles once they get to the site. If not, monetise via adsense. My thought was that if I can get decent traffic on one site, it will motivate me to dedicate the time to do all the others.

Appreciate your encouragement to get on with it, thank you.