Any Ideas? Massive Rankings Drop Started Sep 8th and Continuing

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

Greetings, I am fairly new so I hope I am posting this in the right place.

Site is built in WordPress in the retail niche and keyword rankings are down 3,715 spots, a decrease of 1222%. Lot of hard work looks like it is disappearing. I looked into the following:

No manual actions.
No security issues.
Plug ins up to date.
No issues with robot.txt.
No major errors on site (404 etc).
No changes to disavow list this year.
No toxic referring domains in backlink portfolio.
No major content/design changes in a few months.

There are 52 CPL issues in Google Search Console from September 4th to the 8th. Could this be the issue? Alternatively, I did start losing links in August, but they look like bot/aggregated links made on forums with no real value, something that has been true for this site for the past 19 months. Most of my links are web 2.0 or from businesses that have us listed as preferred vendors, but did not lose any of those links. Could either of these issues be the culprit? Feeling a little helpless and like maybe I'm missing something? Most of the ranking drops seemed to happen late last month from online chatter I have read.

Edit: Grammar fix in a sentence.

KelvyTheBlacky · Sep 10, 2020

I'm also seeing almost the same thing with some of my sites. Seems Google gods have striken once more. Have mercy thy gods

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

KelvyTheBlacky said:
I'm also seeing almost the same thing with some of my sites. Seems Google gods have striken once more. Have mercy thy gods

Thank you for the feedback. Misery loves company?

Hoping this starts changing course soon for both of us! Would love to hear if anyone else has noticed something similar recently.

ziko12345 · Sep 10, 2020

Actually, my site lost rankings on july started growing again 3 days ago. Its the complete opposite but i think this means there is a google update going on. You seem to have covered what could have caused the drop in rankings so for now you cant do anything except publish more content and wait.

DGhubSEO · Sep 10, 2020

Could be because of the core web vitals. whatever issue found on GSC i will try to fix ASAP.

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

DGhubSEO said:
Could be because of the core web vitals. whatever issue found on GSC i will try to fix ASAP.

Thank you, I will put my focus on there for sure. I am surprised if it would have this much of an impact....

Rifle33 · Sep 10, 2020

ziko12345 said:
Actually, my site lost rankings on july started growing again 3 days ago. Its the complete opposite but i think this means there is a google update going on. You seem to have covered what could have caused the drop in rankings so for now you cant do anything except publish more content and wait.

The same here! I lost rankings in August and started to get some keywords ranking again three days ago. I am adding content every day.

Rifle33 · Sep 10, 2020

Atom Smasher said:
Thank you, I will put my focus on there for sure. I am surprised if it would have this much of an impact....

I get the same error in GSC few days ago and I am working on better optimization and speed now...

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

eislamov said:
I get the same error in GSC few days ago and I am working on better optimization and speed now...

Would love to hear if it helps fix the issue! I'm doing the same thing - working on speed and layout myself - identifying CLS issues seems to be a pain.

Edit: Grammar.

Rifle33 · Sep 10, 2020

Atom Smasher said:
Would love to hear if it helps fix the issue! I'm doing the same thing - working on speed and layout.

I actually have a guy on Fiverr for that, he delivers me good results, but @Festinger is doing the same thing here on BHW, I heard he is top class for that for a good price

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

eislamov said:
I actually have a guy on Fiverr for that, he delivers me good results, but @Festinger is doing the same thing here on BHW, I heard he is top class for that for a good price

TY for the reference. Looks like he is out until September 14th - I will send him a DM and hopefully get the ball rolling (unless these fixes stick (I'm not a great web designer/coder)).

Mr Positive · Sep 10, 2020

Did you check backlink to see if you’re being hit by negative seo?

Festinger Vault · Sep 10, 2020

Atom Smasher said:
TY for the reference. Looks like he is out until September 14th - I will send him a DM and hopefully get the ball rolling (unless these fixes stick (I'm not a great web designer/coder)).

I am still here

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

Mr Positive said:
Did you check backlink to see if you’re being hit by negative seo?

I was thinking the same thing so I looked at the referring domains and there's nothing new / strange there initially. I will click through each domain to see if maybe I missed something.

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

Festinger said:
I am still here

@Festinger Thank you for reaching out! I feel pretty dumb asking this but how do I send a user a DM? Do not see a way to start a conversation when clicking on user.

ThopHayt · Sep 10, 2020

Google has been trying hard to shuffle results for a better outcome (as far as THEY are concerned) since the outbreak and resulting recession. Little guys seem to be getting up rough and dry as is usual.

-ThopHayt

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

Update: Went through the backlinks, just some regular spam, nothing crazy. Added a couple to disavow. Also made some layout and speed fixes with some good results and submitted error fix validation in GSC. Will post any updates!

Atom Smasher · Sep 10, 2020

Update: On WP backend in account management for Admin I noticed it had the option highlighted "log out everywhere else". I did this, refreshed, everyone logged out. I went to change my password and refreshed the admin user account and AGAIN it was highlighted "log out everywhere else." Changed password, logged out everywhere else, its been 15 minutes, so far no more sessions. Is this a sign of being hacked? Or can the log out sessions be a part of my host or some other activity? I only work on this site with one device.

Atom Smasher · Sep 11, 2020

UPDATE: Turns out I got hacked. I was surprised because plug ins were updated and initial tests came back clean. After looking at some php files saw the signs, ran with a new service and going with manual fixes through on top of automated clean up. Thanks everyone in BHW community for the help!

Any Ideas? Massive Rankings Drop Started Sep 8th and Continuing

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