Sudden Ranked Drop? Google Algo Update?

Kikerinka · Dec 18, 2019

From my 23 websites, not a single one is affected. Prefer not to disclose the niche, but it's a serious one.

I don't use any redirects, don't work with expired domains, and I haven't bought or built a single link in almost 2 years. But I work a lot with on-page stuff and site structure, often in an unorthodox ways... seems all of that is fine for Mr. G.

Later I will check some sites of people I coach/work with, to see if they got hit (some of these guys are buying/building links).
Will report here if I see something interesting... Meanwhile, enjoy your Christmas presents from Mr. G00gle

)

Alexfrance · Dec 18, 2019

TayaX said:
same situation for me. Although following competitors. Some hits, some not.

Did you build on expired domains or used any 301 ?

Yes, I guess you followed exactly the same strategy as i did. I have a pyramid of 301 redirects actually. it was actually cheap link building:
- buy cheap mass spammed domains with many adult kw links in it
- point these at bottom of web 2.0s. build up like pyramid
- also expired authirity domains: spam existing backlinks with adult kws. I really loved re-using political sites for these as i hated these left politicians anyways

queenjude · Dec 18, 2019

Looks like an algo tweak/update - 1 of my sites hit pretty hard. I've deleted PBNs a while back but doesn't seem to matter. I think it'll bounce back. Heavy traffic kw tanked pretty hard but low search kw untouched and still ranking top 3. Not sure what this update is about other than to shake out non-big name household websites.

Manulinho800 · Dec 18, 2019

yayapart said:
Anyone from Germany who got hit?

I built my money sites mostly on expired domains, bought guest posts, built links from my own PBN, did 301 redirects and I'm in the health & beauty niche.
Rankings? No movement at all for ALL of my websites. 10 Moneysites, no ranking changes. I wonder if the update didn't arrive in Germany yet or if I'm just lucky af.

im from Germany too and my websites are down.. 90% traffic decrease. All expired domains und no pbn links.

yesfuture · Dec 18, 2019

Manulinho800 said:
90% traffic decrease. All expired domains und no pbn links.

Any other links? Like guest posts?

fheaky · Dec 18, 2019

Manulinho800 said:
im from Germany too and my websites are down.. 90% traffic decrease. All expired domains und no pbn links.

Is your site targeting the German or English speaking market though?

proxyguys · Dec 19, 2019

Two things I noticed....

> Sites that used cheap link building services saw a drop in rankings.
> Sites that used NO paid SEO techniques experienced nice ranking increases recently.

jstover77 · Dec 19, 2019

Spats said:
My Google Analytics were down by 20% yesterday, which made me nervous. Must have been a glitch because Google corrected it a few hours ago - got a slight increase.

These updates never seem to affect me. Travel niche. And yes, I use WordPress.

Yes, this was a known glitch with GA yesterday. It should be fixed now.

praetserge · Dec 19, 2019

Kambaggo said:
This update once again shows the importance of making sure your website is ranking in Bing.

Get your site Bing verified and submit your sitemap in Bing webmaster tools.

Had a closer look at my stats and found that 20% of my traffic comes from Bing.

I guess it is better to bet on two horses (In the case of Google and Bing on a Horse and a Shetland pony)

back to the subject... why wouldn't you bother about bing and duckduckgo??? They bring some traffic and if you optimise your website then you'll rank everywhere.
Google is a beast when it comes to search engines but 20% or so extra traffic from the other search engines will never hurt.

It's nothing to do with 301 per se... I know websites which use 10's or even 100's of 301 redirects and nothing.

expired domains? I suspect google has been hitting those for some time.
The reason I mentioned expired domains... I found quite a big PBN network yesterday by checking some backlinks from some websites... and within a few seconds per site I knew they were PBN's (public blog networks) so I wonder how long it took google to figure that.
Just because an expired domain has a link from huff, doesn't make it a great expired domain, it's only good for PBN to sell blog posts on, and that's exactly what you get.

Alexfrance · Dec 19, 2019

proxyguys said:
Two things I noticed....

> Sites that used cheap link building services saw a drop in rankings.
> Sites that used NO paid SEO techniques experienced nice ranking increases recently.

yes i have some websites that are pretty much ready to be started with. basically everything finished like content + images but i havent build links to it yet cuz i wanna index and let google slowly age in google. some sites have suddenly traffic, not much just 15-65 visitors past few week.

Psh · Dec 19, 2019

One of my main sites got absolutely wrecked - R.I.P.

I should feel like shit but I've become immune from past updates.

All my other sites are untouched. Maybe one or two positions here or there, but nothing major.

Great timing Google, just in time for Christmas.

EDIT: Actually another site of mine didn't lose ranks, but about 35% traffic. Must've dropped longtails or something.. sigh. Time to get into PPC?

EDIT 2: Checked traffic instead of just rank positions. Ohhh yeah, most of my sites got their anus split in half. One has -116% organic traffic, sweet. Thanks Google, I love you.

0verflow · Dec 19, 2019

Cant see a change here either. Maybe sites with cheap links got hit?

Fjaer · Dec 19, 2019

proxyguys said:
Two things I noticed....

> Sites that used cheap link building services saw a drop in rankings.
> Sites that used NO paid SEO techniques experienced nice ranking increases recently.

You for sure haven't noticed shit

Marabunta · Dec 19, 2019

I wonder how stats for sites running considerable ad campaigns or operating through a google partner compare in all this.

Seems there's been a big move to push those with more intimate commercial relations with themselves IMHO.

Elon Snup · Dec 19, 2019

Marabunta said:
I wonder how stats for sites running considerable ad campaigns or operating through a google partner compare in all this.

Seems there's been a big move to push those with more intimate commercial relations with themselves IMHO.

sounds conspirationist. I dont buy it

Marabunta · Dec 19, 2019

TayaX said:
sounds conspirationist. I dont buy it

I bet their algo involves a benchmark that measures a small (esp those on open source CMS/CMF) sites popularity against how engaged it is either with themselves (through paid campaigns) or with their appointed partners on the marketing platform.

Anything that does not correlate comfortably to "google approved" SEO and is ranking highly would be deemed 'unnatural'.

Of course, it will all be under the premise of "protecting users from a breach of confidence in their products and services", or "ensuring production of highest quality, authentic results" or something along those lines.

nakamura · Dec 19, 2019

yayapart said:
Anyone from Germany who got hit?

I built my money sites mostly on expired domains, bought guest posts, built links from my own PBN, did 301 redirects and I'm in the health & beauty niche.
Rankings? No movement at all for ALL of my websites. 10 Moneysites, no ranking changes. I wonder if the update didn't arrive in Germany yet or if I'm just lucky af.

Yes, I have german and english sites got hit at the same time.

fb3003 · Dec 19, 2019

despite what everyone is saying, take a look at this by @cyberjix - hist site (miamiseobitch dot com) is still tanking #1 for miami seo. he is using pbn.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/pbn-ranking-case-study.1170062/

@cyberjix - if you come across this post, would appreciate if you share any fluctuations that you are seeing across your clients.

bagle · Dec 19, 2019

Same here, traffic drop 80% (no analytics bug).
German site, e-commere (price comparison):

Launched May 2019, DA-8, Some guestposts, no expired-Domains. In sum only 40 Do-Follow Links. No PBNs. Created unique quality texts.

User engagement on site was really good, better than an old project...

Only got these classical spam-links from these "we are parsing the google page 1 for one keyword and generate a website" sites, with expired sites.

nakamura · Dec 19, 2019

no single statement from Google or their employees on this? I mean it seems like many people on here got affected by this. Won't be only us.

Sudden Ranked Drop? Google Algo Update?

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