A Massive Rank Drop

ouchthathurts · Jul 2, 2019

if you do site:https://www.oldsite.com in google search (incognito) are all your old pages and posts still indexed? If so I would use a serp scraper tool like https://www.chrisains.com/seo-tools/extract-urls-from-image-serps/ and get the lot in a nice text file then upload them to your search console and request they are removed.

See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en for Remove URLs Tool info

hippo123 · Jul 2, 2019

Is the new domain really "new"? Or is it a penalized domain that you might not have known of?

aidenhera · Jul 2, 2019

OP's PBNs been caught

LeanLow · Jul 2, 2019

Add them both on WMT and confirm the 301. Although 301s are a bit random and doesn't always work like they should.

Adiuvat · Jul 2, 2019

yasin.wazza10 said:
I hate watching these red marks .. just a few weeks ago 10 of my KWs were ranking in Top 10 as per Serprobot and now only 2 of them sit there.

And didn't recover yet?

nakamura said:
Thats the problem with Google these days. Nobody has any clue what the fuck is going on or what they are about.

You changed the domain, regained rankings and BAM SUDDENLY out of nowhere you lose all your traffic and rankings and nobody knows why. And no one can tell you what exactly happened, why it happened and how long it takes until you get the rankings back, if (!) you get them back.

Since they use Rankbrain and other AIs it doesn't make any sense anymore. Like...what is this about? Why would they suddenly push your website out of the rankings, while ranking it very well before?

I had this problem as well. Suddenly my website ranked really well, but all of the sudden, after two weeks, it was sent straight to page 7,8 or 9, where it still stays (more than 5 months now!) and NO single word from Google on what the heck this is about. I would really like to hear a statement from Google.

Personally its very important for me to figure out whats going on and what triggers this massive drop in the serps, since it happened to me as well.

Did you have any significant changes before?

The only guess I have is, the site dropped because of massive incoming links from the old domain using 301 redirect. Which is around 5K-6K links.
Does my guess make sense?

Adiuvat · Jul 2, 2019

ouchthathurts said:
if you do site:https://www.oldsite.com in google search (incognito) are all your old pages and posts still indexed? If so I would use a serp scraper tool like https://www.chrisains.com/seo-tools/extract-urls-from-image-serps/ and get the lot in a nice text file then upload them to your search console and request they are removed.

See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en for Remove URLs Tool info

Yes, the old pages still indexed. So I should remove it manually rather than waiting for Google do it?
Thanks for the advice!

hippo123 said:
Is the new domain really "new"? Or is it a penalized domain that you might not have known of?

Not penalized, as the new domain already ranking tens of keywords to page 1-3 before. The new domain is aged and have good referring domain, not only just metrics.

aidenhera said:
OP's PBNs been caught

Fortunately, from thousands of link, only 40 is PBN and the anchors are just branded.

LeanLow said:
Add them both on WMT and confirm the 301. Although 301s are a bit random and doesn't always work like they should.

I can confirm that all 301 is done properly, as the traffic flowing from the old domain in the first few days smoothly.

nakamura · Jul 2, 2019

Adiuvat said:
Did you have any significant changes before?

The only guess I have is, the site dropped because of massive incoming links from the old domain using 301 redirect. Which is around 5K-6K links.
Does my guess make sense?

The funny thing is, I kept everything natural. I didn't build any link. Just set up the website on a decent expired domain, created the website and did some internal linking. After three weeks the website was on page 2 for the most keywords. It was climbing up naturally, but after two weeks it was sent straight to page 7, where it remains for now. Its been 5 months. I have no idea why or what triggered this drop. Even now the serps on page 2 and 3 are full of shit and unrelevant websites, my website is not coming back for those terms. I could go crazy on non sense shit like this.

LeanLow · Jul 2, 2019

Adiuvat said:
Yes, the old pages still indexed. So I should remove it manually rather than waiting for Google do it?
Thanks for the advice!

Not penalized, as the new domain already ranking tens of keywords to page 1-3 before. The new domain is aged and have good referring domain, not only just metrics.

Fortunately, from thousands of link, only 40 is PBN and the anchors are just branded.

I can confirm that all 301 is done properly, as the traffic flowing from the old domain in the first few days smoothly.

Is the content exactly the same, as in titles pictures, etc? Is it a wildcard 301, each page to each page? It could take a lot more time, like up to 2-3 months at the latest. If it doesn't get back to normal in max 3 months, then it's serious. That's the reason I hate 301's for sites that are already established, it can fuck your shit up.

Adiuvat · Jul 2, 2019

nakamura said:
The funny thing is, I kept everything natural. I didn't build any link. Just set up the website on a decent expired domain, created the website and did some internal linking. After three weeks the website was on page 2 for the most keywords. It was climbing up naturally, but after two weeks it was sent straight to page 7, where it remains for now. Its been 5 months. I have no idea why or what triggered this drop. Even now the serps on page 2 and 3 are full of shit and unrelevant websites, my website is not coming back for those terms. I could go crazy on non sense shit like this.

I just set up the website on a decent expiring domain.

Because of that drop alone, I am losing thousands of Adsense Revenue.
If the value is just tens of dollars I can stay chill.

The 5K-6K links I have mentioned before, is natural backlink coming from the old domain.

LeanLow said:
Is the content exactly the same, as in titles pictures, etc? Is it a wildcard 301, each page to each page? It could take a lot more time, like up to 2-3 months at the latest. If it doesn't get back to normal in max 3 months, then it's serious. That's the reason I hate 301's for sites that are already established, it can fuck your shit up.

Yes. Everything the same. I use Duplicator PRO, tough. Do 301, verify every page if it returned http status 200.

The only change I made is just change the theme to GeneratePress and trying Ezoic.

I actually move to a better domain name, in terms of links.

The first impression is like what I expected. But after 12 days, BOOM. Sudden drop.

Denzil273 · Jul 2, 2019

I saw my website ranking dropped from 3.2 to 44, and there are two such cases in google search console, But I don’t find the reason.

LeanLow · Jul 3, 2019

Adiuvat said:
I just set up the website on a decent expiring domain.

Because of that drop alone, I am losing thousands of Adsense Revenue.
If the value is just tens of dollars I can stay chill.

The 5K-6K links I have mentioned before, is natural backlink coming from the old domain.

Yes. Everything the same. I use Duplicator PRO, tough. Do 301, verify every page if it returned http status 200.

The only change I made is just change the theme to GeneratePress and trying Ezoic.

I actually move to a better domain name, in terms of links.

The first impression is like what I expected. But after 12 days, BOOM. Sudden drop.

What do you mean moved to a better domain in terms of links? Did you 301'd to a domain that already had links? There's your problem then. How many links, niche relevant?

Adiuvat · Jul 3, 2019

LeanLow said:
What do you mean moved to a better domain in terms of links? Did you 301'd to a domain that already had links? There's your problem then. How many links, niche relevant?

I migrate my old site to my aged domain. Yes.

The link from the old domain is around 4500 links from 540 RD according to Google Search Console - External Links, and my new domain has around 17.000 external links from 2.500 RD according to Google Search Console.

So, the day when Google detects my old domain has 301. My new domain receives 4600 links from my old domain.
The new incoming links from the old domain appeared on the new domain GSC on June 28th/29th. And on June 30th, the sudden drop happened.

Do you think this is the problem? a massive incoming link just in a day?
I am not sure if this may be the problem, as I already told Google if my address has changed using "change of address tool".

And no, the links on the new domain is not relevant. But I already post some articles before that the niche is relevant to the old domain, and they rank good enough.

Bawsaq · Jul 3, 2019

By any chance are you using an expired domain?

I've had the same thing happen whilst using an expired domain. Domain was completely clean and rankings were going great and most keywords made page 1 then one day suddenly dropped to page 3+, then a month later dropped to oblivion. I tried a lot to fix it but nothing worked and rankings kept getting worse so I gave up on it. Never got a manual penalty and was never found out why this happened.

A few KW's from the site:

nichexposure · Jul 3, 2019

Did you check the web archive history of your domain? Having a good link profile and metrics is not enough to go with it.

Adiuvat · Jul 3, 2019

Bawsaq said:
By any chance are you using an expired domain?

I've had the same thing happen whilst using an expired domain. Domain was completely clean and rankings were going great and most keywords made page 1 then one day suddenly dropped to page 3+, then a month later dropped to oblivion. I tried a lot to fix it but nothing worked and rankings kept getting worse so I gave up on it. Never got a manual penalty and was never found out why this happened.

A few KW's from the site:

No, I am using auctioned expiry domain.

Got this domain in January and then create some posts to see how it ranks. The results are positive, so I decide to move my old site to this domain.
So you migrate a blog to an expired domain with high metrics and good RD and expect a ranking boost? if so, that's what happened to me too.

Have you tried to disavow the old domain? or withdraw the change of site request?

This site generates really good revenue and I've put so much work on it. There is no way for me to give up on it

nichexposure said:
Did you check the web archive history of your domain? Having a good link profile and metrics is not enough to go with it.

Yes. All clean. I've even tried to rank some keywords with around ~10KD, and it rank good just in few days.

Bawsaq · Jul 3, 2019

Adiuvat said:
No, I am using auctioned expiry domain.

Got this domain in January and then create some posts to see how it ranks. The results are positive, so I decide to move my old site to this domain.
So you migrate a blog to an expired domain with high metrics and good RD and expect a ranking boost? if so, that's what happened to me too.

Have you tried to disavow the old domain? or withdraw the change of site request?

This site generates really good revenue and I've put so much work on it. There is no way for me to give up on it

In my case the website was built on the expired domain, I never migrated it from another domain.

If I were you I'd probably just move back to your old domain if your rankings don't correct themselves in the next month, that way you can at-least save some of your traffic. Wish you the best anyway, I know the feeling of having this happen to you.

Adiuvat · Jul 3, 2019

Bawsaq said:
In my case the website was built on the expired domain, I never migrated it from another domain.

If I were you I'd probably just move back to your old domain if your rankings don't correct themselves in the next month, that way you can at-least save some of your traffic. Wish you the best anyway, I know the feeling of having this happen to you.

Yes. If the rank doesn't get any better, I would move it back and withdraw the change of address.

Thanks for the kind words, really appreciated it.

al3xis · Jul 4, 2019

Bawsaq said:
By any chance are you using an expired domain?

I've had the same thing happen whilst using an expired domain. Domain was completely clean and rankings were going great and most keywords made page 1 then one day suddenly dropped to page 3+, then a month later dropped to oblivion. I tried a lot to fix it but nothing worked and rankings kept getting worse so I gave up on it. Never got a manual penalty and was never found out why this happened.

A few KW's from the site:

I had the same with an expired domain.. The domain I reg it on September 2018, build the old website + post daily new quality articles (health niche)

Start of June I had massive drops of around 20-35 positions (for keywords that was on #1-5 spots)..

aidenhera · Jul 4, 2019

how many articles, daily views and adsense revenue you had OP?

PS imo google is very dumb about redirects they dont always work

Adiuvat · Jul 27, 2019

Want to give some updates.

The traffic back after 5 days after drop, then going drop again after 4 days for 6 days.
And finally, the traffic is coming back.

I assume that it happens because there are massive links coming from the old domain, and those links coming at once.

Thanks for the response guys

A Massive Rank Drop

Power Member

Elite Member

BANNED

Senior Member

Registered Member

Registered Member

Elite Member

Senior Member

Registered Member

Newbie

Senior Member

Registered Member

Regular Member

Elite Member

Registered Member

Regular Member

Registered Member

Registered Member

BANNED

Registered Member

Main Menu

Marketplace

Making Money

BlackHat World