Can Google "delist" your page for a specific keyword?

I've started ranking really high for a certain keyword, getting to page 1 fast (I made a major update a week ago), and after sitting there for 2 days I'm not tanking for this keyword at all anymore. I'm still ranking for the other keywords, though. No changes there.


Actually, that was a total makeover of that page ( I changed everything apart from the main theme: which smartwatch is good in 2025?). So I assumee that Google treats it as a new page and needs more time to evaluate (trust) it. Yet, the page is ranking for the other keywords with no changes. Perhaps since they're easy.

Any ideas, guys?

Actually, I asked Google to index a page about "which Garmin smartwach is good in 2025?" 3 hours ago and i think this is th reason they took off my page.

Rardak said:

Actually, I asled Google to index a page about "which Garmin smartwach is good in 2025?" 3 hours ago and i think this is th reason they took off my page.

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I can't see the correlation....

tazarbm said:

I can't see the correlation....

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It's the same theme. And the page disapeared for that keyword (which smartwatch is good?) just after asking Google to index the other page (Which Garmin smartwatch is good?). I had the same issue with inexpensive branded watches and good branded watches. To Google it seemed to be all the same. There was canibalization.


I'm going to wait and see what they do about that for some time, though.

wait, wait, wait.... you're confusing the hell out of me, man...

Before I try to figure out what the problem is please answer to these questions:

1) when you say "theme" do you actually mean keyword?
2) what are the age of both your domain and your site?
3) when you said (in your initial post) that you've "changed everything except for the main theme" what exactly did you change?? Like, you've rewritten the entire content and used different images, or what exactly did you do?

1) Theme are best smartwatches in 2025 and best Garmin smartwatches in 2025. The keywords are: which smartwach model is good? and which Garmin's model is good?
I think G needs time to figure out if it's not the same/"too similar" topic.
2) it's an expired domain (10 y.o.) and the website is 2 y.o.) yet I changed it's theme many times (withing watches)
3) I changed everyything (the layout, structure etc), apart from the theme and the keyword.

Another thing is, I've seen canibalization on the same page, e.x. the keyword "Guess watches for women" ranked on page 1 and when I added a subtopic "the newest Guess watches for women", it got kicked out and I started ranking for the latter keyword. The same when it comes to the keyword watches for women (and watches for men). I started ranking only when I kicked out the other pages targeting those keywords indirectly like (luxury watches for men / women and cheap waches for men / women). It's crazy but that how it is. You need to really focus on one keyword if there's an overlap.

What works is dislocating those keywords, so instead of using the keyword "luxury watches for women", you use those three words "luxury", "watches" and "for women" separately, never as an exact match keyword, unless you don't care about ranking for "luxury watches" and you're interested only in your target keyword (for you whole site, sic!), since there would be one page canibalization (where you can still rank for both terms, yet it's harder, or so it seems). It works like a charm for me.

Yet, this time it's too much for me (lol), as the only "canibla phrase" is "which model is good" (it's in Thai, so they're included in both keywords mentioned in the first post).


On the other hand, I have lots of topics with the kyword "watch" (Seiko watch, Maserati watch etc.) written in the same manner (the same theme and layout: why choose watch of X brand) and all of them rank great thanks to GPT lol


It's all bs, I think, Google is still primitive.

I have no idea why you don't use the standard terminology (topic / niche) and you resort to using the less common "theme" word, but anyway, I understand now what you mean

Rardak said:

Another thing is, I've seen canibalization on the same page, e.x. the keyword "Guess watches for women" ranked on page 1 and when I added a subtopic "the newest Guess watches for women", it got kicked out and I started ranking for the latter keyword. The same when it comes to the keyword watches for women (and watches for men). I started ranking only when I kicked out the other pages targeting those keywords indirectly like (luxury watches for men / women and cheap waches for men / women). It's crazy but that how it is. You need to really focus on one keyword if there's an overlap.

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it's not crazy at all, and it is just like you mentioned the first time: cannibalization (ie. you have 2 or more pages optimized for the same keyword, so google gets confused and doesn't rank the page you want them to rank, or - and this does happen a lot - they rank none of the pages at all until you fix the problem... I guess you were lucky that you managed to at least rank one of the pages)

Rardak said:

What works is dislocating those keywords, so instead of using the keyword "luxury watches for women", you use those three words "luxury", "watches" and "for women" separately, never as your target keyword, unless you don't care about ranking for "luxury watches", since there would be one page canibalization (where you can still rank for both terms, yet it's harder, or so it seems). It works like a charm for me.

Yet, this time it's too much for me (lol), as the only "canibla phrase" is "which model is good" (it's in Thai, so they're included in both keywords mentioned in the first post).

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I'll be honest, I don't know how to reply to this because I'll have to check your site and analyze your content in detail to figure out where the problem is.

But like I said (and like you also said) it's definitely a cannibalization issue, so try to reduce the number of pages that target the same or similar keywords to only 1 page for 1 keyword, or for 1 set of identical / similar keywords

Rardak said:

I think G needs time to figure out if it's not the same/"too similar" topic.

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since you domain and site are so aged, it's not a matter of time, it's a matter of fixing the issue. If google were able to replace your pages in the SERPs only 3 hours after requesting indexation it means that google already trusts your site and they'll probably make any changes you implement to your site, within hours. That's why I don't think it's a matter of time, so I wouldn't wait for more than 1 day.... ok, make it 2 days to be really sure, to figure out whether the changes you make are good or bad...

Google doesn’t remove pages for specific keywords, but rankings can drop due to updates, relevance changes, or having multiple pages targeting the same keyword. When this happens, Google gets confused about which page to rank. Major updates to a page can also make Google reassess its relevance. To fix this, make sure each page targets a unique keyword and resubmit any updated pages for indexing. Clear and focused content is key to better rankings!

What's interesting the keyword "which model is good" was mentioned only in the title of the other page (and acoss the page that go "delisted" for it). I'm fixing it now by removing it from the title of the other page. Let's see how it goes.

Google has page level and site level algorithm, so I guess it MAY got that penalty, but who knows.

terrycody said:

Google has page level and site level algorithm, so I guess it MAY got that penalty, but who knows.

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Yeah, it's cannibalization. I've fixed that and now I'm going to wait for several weeks. Drat. The best keyword. lol

Four days ago, I created a page about "what brand of smartwach is good?" and it started rranking on page 1 immediately but it got delisted as well. Just 3 h ago. Both pages are indexed but don't show up when using "site:". I suppose the page "what brand of smartwach is good?" got delisted because I did 301 from that first page that got hit. Drat!

Google doesn’t delist pages for specific keywords but may adjust rankings temporarily during major updates. Rankings often stabilize after re-crawling and indexing, so keep monitoring.

Rardak said:

I've started ranking really high for a certain keyword, getting to page 1 fast (I made a major update a week ago), and after sitting there for 2 days I'm not tanking for this keyword at all anymore. I'm still ranking for the other keywords, though. No changes there.


Actually, that was a total makeover of that page ( I changed everything apart from the main theme: which smartwatch is good in 2025?). So I assumee that Google treats it as a new page and needs more time to evaluate (trust) it. Yet, the page is ranking for the other keywords with no changes. Perhaps since they're easy.

Any ideas, guys?

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Did you use any blackhat techniques?

Nikolaos said:

Did you use any blackhat techniques?

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No. I just checked that again. Google ranks both pages (which model of smartwatch is good and what brand of smartwatch is good) on page 1 for the most important keywords now! That's insane! But I love it!