5 replies to this topic

[btreloar]

A client has excellent rankings in Google, but Bing rankings dropped by 75% last August and Yahoo rankings dropped by 75% as well, but not until November. A typical keyword ranks #1 in Google but #48 in Yahoo and Bing today. Bing results have been recovering slowly and are now down only 50% from before. Yahoo results are still down 70% or so. I've been watching for recovery, assuming some significant algorithm change happened, but six months is a long time to be in the doldrums.

I've checked on-page optimization for a few sample keyword phrases and compared it against the top rankings sites in Yahoo, and we're not out of range in any respect there. I checked MozRanks, and found the top 5 results in Yahoo range from 0.0 to 4.83 with an average of 1.85. Our client has a MozRank of 3.89.

All signs indicate a healthy, well-optimized site.

Has anyone else experienced this? Were there any known algorithm changes about that time? Any suggestions of what else to examine for answers/solutions?

[Michael Martinez]

Bing's Duane Forrester just Tweeted me that most of their guidelines are "current to last year". Some updates are coming. I think you need to look at the Bing Webmaster Guidelines and see if anything stands out.

[chrishirst]

Disclaimer:

Rankings may go down as well as up. If you fail to make allowances for this and suffer financial hardship as a result {insert SE name} cannot be held responsible.

[btreloar]

Bing's Duane Forrester just Tweeted me that most of their guidelines are "current to last year". Some updates are coming. I think you need to look at the Bing Webmaster Guidelines and see if anything stands out.

I must admit, I haven't looked at the Bing Webmaster Guidelines, feeling safe knowing the Google guidelines and since we only do White Hat SEO. But your suggestion is well received; I'll check those out immediately.

[btreloar]

Disclaimer:

Rankings may go down as well as up. If you fail to make allowances for this and suffer financial hardship as a result {insert SE name} cannot be held responsible.

That's pretty obvious, Chris. And fluctuating rankings are a fact of life. (Witness one of my favorite cartoons here: http://www.rankedhar...pectations.php)

But what we've seen here is an order of magnitude greater than what we typically encounter.

[Michael Martinez]

Duane said something at SMX West like, "Whatever you do for Google should generally be good for Bing" but you should still make sure there isn't something in the Bing guidelines that is different from Google's guidelines. They are not using the same algorithms so usually when you see a discrepancy like this in search behavior that means there is something one algorithm simply objects to.

The first place to look in that situation is the specific search engine's guidelines.

Unfortunately, since the Bing guidelines are not completely up to date, if you don't see anything obvious you may have to experiment your client out of the dip. That is time-consuming.