Penalty or Dance? Sudden SERP drop!

newon

Power Member

Dec 16, 2011

701

118

• Dec 23, 2016

• #1

On 17th December 2016, SERP for few of my main keywords dropped drastically.

I checked WMT, no manual action.
No recent backlinking
No major change in the posts... except few YT videos removed from posts (1 per post).
Changed color combination & logo for the site during start of December.

Can't understand what might have went wrong... any idea?

 

cdn_craigs

Elite Member

Jul 16, 2011

1,939

703

• Dec 23, 2016

• #2

is this a new domain? content unique? if this is a new domain, the dance will happen

 

newon

Power Member

Dec 16, 2011

701

118

• Dec 23, 2016
• Thread Starter Thread Starter

• #3

cdn_craigs said:

is this a new domain? content unique? if this is a new domain, the dance will happen

Click to expand...

It's 2 years' old domain... contents are unique and high quality. Most of the keywords were in top 10.

 

pollaris75

Regular Member

Jan 3, 2010

462

143

• Dec 23, 2016

• #4

The same has happened to me also. Semrush reports a -50% drop in traffic. Google is being google again.

 

newon

Power Member

Dec 16, 2011

701

118

• Dec 23, 2016
• Thread Starter Thread Starter

• #5

pollaris75 said:

The same has happened to me also. Semrush reports a -50% drop in traffic. Google is being google again.

Click to expand...

In my case it's -18% ... can't understand what's going on and how to recover

 

pollaris75

Regular Member

Jan 3, 2010

462

143

• Dec 23, 2016

• #6

Just don't understand anything. Build more quality backlinks until you're back on your feet.

 

F

ferghb

Newbie

Aug 21, 2009

46

0

• Dec 23, 2016

• #7

the same here

 

spectrejoe

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Sep 25, 2013

4,705

2,701

• Dec 23, 2016

• #8

Yeap ~30-40% less traffic since the 17th and most of my articles rank went down

 

spectrejoe

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Sep 25, 2013

4,705

2,701

• Dec 23, 2016

• #9

pollaris75 said:

Just don't understand anything. Build more quality backlinks until you're back on your feet.

Click to expand...

easier said than done honestly

 

pollaris75

Regular Member

Jan 3, 2010

462

143

• Dec 23, 2016

• #10

spectrejoe said:

easier said than done honestly

Click to expand...

Well.. yes. I'm struggling with this also.

 

Takoona

Regular Member

Aug 11, 2015

393

121

• Dec 23, 2016

• #11

Me too. One of my sites has been hit hard.

 

T

thashytt

Registered Member

Feb 24, 2015

93

15

• Dec 23, 2016

• #12

you aren't alone - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-update-23146.html

 

W

wierdoguy

Newbie

Dec 23, 2016

3

1

• Dec 23, 2016

• #13

It keeps happening, we just have to allow time and see how things settle.

 

gtull2

Power Member

Apr 25, 2013

637

360

• Dec 23, 2016

• #14

I lost around 50% traffic to my primary offline site. No changes to the content or back linking in a year or so.

 

spectrejoe

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Sep 25, 2013

4,705

2,701

• Dec 24, 2016

• #15

gtull2 said:

I lost around 50% traffic to my primary offline site. No changes to the content or back linking in a year or so.

Click to expand...

wow strange as hell

 

gtull2

Power Member

Apr 25, 2013

637

360

• Dec 24, 2016

• #16

spectrejoe said:

wow strange as hell

Click to expand...

Yeah, not happy about it at all.

Taking a glance I think that just about all of my sites were negatively impacted.

On one of my offline business blogs I added a new generic post 4 days ago. Traffic fell like a rock for that whole site.

This has me a little worried.

 

R

romeoesteban

Junior Member

Oct 26, 2013

131

50

• Dec 24, 2016

• #17

Updated to WordPress 4.7? Check your ALT tags.

 

spectrejoe

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Sep 25, 2013

4,705

2,701

• Dec 24, 2016

• #18

romeoesteban said:

Updated to WordPress 4.7? Check your ALT tags.

Click to expand...

care to explain?

 

R

romeoesteban

Junior Member

Oct 26, 2013

131

50

• Dec 24, 2016

• #19

WordPress 4.7 made I lose almost all alt tags on around 500 posts. I lost 2/3 of my traffic between dec 8 and today (34k a day to 12 k).

Previous versions of WordPress worked this way: the filename of the media would become the TITLE of the image, and the TITLE would also be the ALT, unless you specified an ALT manually. WordPress would use all media TITLE as ALT on all your posts. This changed in version 4.7. My site is image heavy and the ALT are very important for my rankings. I AM currently manually editing all of them.

 

uesat

Regular Member

Sep 25, 2013

272

45

• Dec 24, 2016

• #20

Same here. But I lost rankings for about 15 websites today. No idea why. None of them are even close to being over-optimized back-links wise. And stuck on page 2 for months for a bunch of them too.