What the hell happened?

[codeman1234]

Hello Guys,

just want to inform you on the new updates: it's been 2 days that we change the duplicate meta-tags issue and fix it, we are now waiting for Google to crawl all the website with the new meta tags content, to see if that fixes the issue, I am not sure if it fixes the issue or not yet but, today I notice all my rankings were back on Bing, maybe has nothing to do, but, my ranking was also affected in Bing and Yahoo with this duplicate meta tags issue.


Please let me know what you think, thanks everyone for the help! I will keep everyone on the loop!!

 

[assphuck]

My domain is 5 years old and only two years ago did I decide to do some "aggressive" link building. When it was over, I probably added about 400 backlinks, with 100 of those being on niche sites. For about 8 months I was ranked high enough to get some business every month. Then late last year everything went to hell and the last three months I've completely re-done my site, removed/disavowed backlinks and done more diverse SEM. So far, things continue to just fall.

I never received any notification from Google through my Webmaster Tools about anything.

About 10 days ago I had a question in regards to Webmaster Tools and disavowing links so I went on that Google webmaster forum and posted the question. One of the staff members who responded took a look at my site, and told me to remove some duplicate pages as well as to get rid of the 10 or so reciprocal links I had. These reciprocal links were with niche sites and up until then I had thought they were valuable. But since this person with Google told me to get rid of them I did, and as of now, most of the links I had with those sites have been removed too.

Since then, my site has dropped even further. I saw one big spike yesterday for my main keyword that gave me a glimmer of hope that a rebound was on the way, and then today it completely fell off the radar again. All this is happening as I did a diverse SEM campaign with akaSam here at BHW.

Because this site is the name of my business, it won't be so easy for me just to get a new domain name and start over again. But at this point I don't really know what else to do. And what really gets me, as a poster above said, I see the majority of my competitors doing the exact same thing I did (duplicate pages to focus on individual cities), reciprocal linking, same amount of backlinks, etc..., etc..., and they haven't moved one bit from the top spots.

Going to Google's webmaster forum and asking questions, especially after using any type of link building service is a mistake. You essentially out yourself and get piss poor information to boot.

Google is moving towards driving its traffic to paid search listings and monetizing as many keyword queries as they can. To even consider getting a new domain is a bad idea in my opinion. What will you do, change domains each time Google rolls out a new algorithm? What will you do if/when the #1 ranked site in your niche is beneath the fold and under ads, images and YouTube videos? I'm not kidding around here either.

 

[zigato]

Sorry to say but you actually caused this... this is info that I picked up last year at a search engine conference where Google's team was there and gave presentations etc. If you didn't receive any info from Google Webmaster Tools about bad links etc, then don't contact them. It'll just put you on their radar.

However it does not mean to say that your website will not come back. You may need to do more brand name linking to dilute everything, or the other way around. Without knowing your anchor text and where your links are coming from it will be difficult to say what you should focus on with your link building. Also try some social signals.

That said, in one of the SEJ/SEL newsletters yesterday there is going to be a "BIG" update to Google's algorithm coming very soon.

 

[frazerbw]

Well this happens from time to time, I lost youtube rankings seemingly randomly a few months ago, however, I'm back up top now.

 

[codeman1234]

Hey Guys,

I just looked at Google Webmaster Tools today and the duplicate meta tags went from 233 to 181 we had fix the issue like a week ago, why it is taking so long for Google to crawl our site? Does anyone know a faster way for Google to crawl our site and let him know we have no more duplicate meta tags? I tried to send the site map but that was like 6 days ago, any other way?


By the way, I can assure everyone that at least my ranking drop was because of duplicate meta tags, because I check with 2 competitors of ours and it seems they had the same problem because they were in similar rankings us ours and I keep seeing them bouncing in the same rate of pages as us at the same time it happen to us, so, I check their sites and notice they have also duplicate meta tags, it cannot be a coincidence! I hope it helps others!!

Thanks Everyone!

 

[innovalist]

There are many reasons why it drops; it may be due to a change in the search engine?s algorithms which dictates where pages rank for keywords in the search engine results pages. The sites which you get a lot of your links from can diminish the amount of link juice which you have overnight.

 

[assphuck]

Hey Guys,

I just looked at Google Webmaster Tools today and the duplicate meta tags went from 233 to 181 we had fix the issue like a week ago, why it is taking so long for Google to crawl our site? Does anyone know a faster way for Google to crawl our site and let him know we have no more duplicate meta tags? I tried to send the site map but that was like 6 days ago, any other way?

It's good that you found a problem that is easily corrected. Be patient now. Google will take 2-4 weeks to crawl all those pages and maybe some time after to crunch all the data. Hopefully at that time your ranks return.

 

[codeman1234]

It's good that you found a problem that is easily corrected. Be patient now. Google will take 2-4 weeks to crawl all those pages and maybe some time after to crunch all the data. Hopefully at that time your ranks return.

Thanks for the info bro, yes rankings are coming back and it seems that Google is crawling it, just need to be patient, if I have any updates I will let you know.

Thanks

 

[codeman1234]

It's good that you found a problem that is easily corrected. Be patient now. Google will take 2-4 weeks to crawl all those pages and maybe some time after to crunch all the data. Hopefully at that time your ranks return.

Well I have to say that you were spot on!!! Its been a bit more than 2-4 weeks for Google to go through all my site but, he finally did and I got all duplicate metatags on HTML Improvements in Webmaster Tools finally to 0 yesterday and today BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM !!!!

Got all my rankings back every single one of them!!!


Problem solved!!!

I know its a bit late but, just want to thank everyone for their help in this rough moment!!


Thanks again guys!