12 replies to this topic

[spacecadet]

What does it mean when Google dropped my home page, but kept an inside page of less relevance for the same keyword? Home page still ranks 1,2, or 3 for other keywords. This started around the middle to end of March. How do I know where to start? Is it the linking, duplication, what?

ANY help would be appreciated.

[chrishirst]

Stop doing useless things such as "checking rankings" and it won't bother you any more.

[spacecadet]

But, my traffic is down 30%. I can't just ignore that.

[Jill]

No way to know without a thorough review which is out of the scope of this forum.

[ChuckFinley]

There are so many G updates going on that one of them may be the curprit with no intention of affecting your site. A recent and little publicized update called Venice which was about Local Search dropped some of our Organic rankings in all locations and some of them are only affected in some regions.

That's not what the Venice update is supposed to be about.

The old Local One Box shows sometimes, the New Places layout shows sometimes, a blend of both show sometimes. I don't think G is concentrating on this -- they're probably busy with the many penalty updates and that's why they've never gotten the New Places Search implementation to work quite right.

Luckily, though, the Venice update caused one of our top level, massively high volume keywords to go to #1 with a Big Picture and Five Big Gold Rating Stars (and I haven't even put up rich snippets yet) and that traffic more than replaces the drop in the others.

Seems to go like that. Changes you initiate or G initiates makes some of them go up and others go down. Hopefully when the change is fully implemented, you come out ranking for better keywords or higher for more keywords.

Edited by ChuckFinley, 30 April 2012 - 06:55 PM.

[chrishirst]

But, my traffic is down 30%. I can't just ignore that.

Now! Had you mentioned that 'minor fact' in the first post my answer would have been somewhat different!

My guess is that a bunch of your links that point to the "Home page" just got devalued so your root url 'value' needs to be re-assessed.


And the answer to your next question;
"Why has that not affected the inner pages?

Because your 'inner' uris are not relying on your "link building" for their 'value'

http://webmaster-talk.eu/en/component/kunena/34-internet-marketing/3068-a-simple-question#3181

[spacecadet]

Hi again. Ironically the page google is showing has no Real Content, it's a before and after photo gallery. The site had held the #1 and 2, or 2 and 3 (toggling between us and wikipedia) position for almost 10 years now. It is a well respected site (IMO) and accredited by HON (their standards are tough). I was surprised to read one of the google people on their forum say this:

"what has changed is that you are no longer ranking on serps as now the honeymoon period is over. New sites are artificially ranked higher so that they are given a chance to see how they do. if searchers click the links to your site, google knows and keeps it there. If they don't get clicked, or if visitors click a link then leave right away, that tells google something as well. and so in time your site ranks where google thinks searchers want it to rank."

posted here: https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!searchin/webmasters/home$20page$20not/webmasters/nmuF9EzSl7k/qBb6uGZnJ68J

If this is true what prevents someone from having someone sit in front of a computer and click on their link over and over again. I don't get it.

[Jill]

If this is true what prevents someone from having someone sit in front of a computer and click on their link over and over again. I don't get it.

Same IP address for all the clicks. Google isn't that dumb.

[spacecadet]

No way to know without a thorough review which is out of the scope of this forum.

Jill, what does it cost to have a site review? And what exactly does it include? Depending on the cost, I have a couple of sites that need looking at right away. I manage 13 sites by myself in-house and it's getting to be a handful. Have been doing this since 1995 with no linking or advertising (on or off the page), just Real Content, as you say, bringing in natural/organic links. They are all medical sites and need updating (some are not so pretty). They ALL rank on page one (and have been for almost 10 years) for several keywords in Bing/Yahoo (that was easy), and with the recent updates in Google only the large sites got hit, but still rank. I'm getting beat up and tired of this whole internet thing and need help.

[Jill]

@spacecadet, depends on the site. Please see my seo services section (link at the top right of forum) which has pricing for site audits. Typically the Standard Site Audit is the one for most sites who've lost traffic due to an algorithm change.

[ChuckFinley]

Same IP address for all the clicks. Google isn't that dumb.

They'd have to put a proxy rotator on it. Plenty of them on the market.

And, who has proof that Google's not dumb anyway? Hard to tell by the way they're going about this.

Edited by ChuckFinley, 01 May 2012 - 09:10 PM.

[Jill]

And, who has proof that Google's not dumb anyway? Hard to tell by the way they're going about this.

Look, Chuck, I'm sorry if you lost your sites in some Google update and now have a vendetta against them. But enough is enough.

[piskie]

Wow, it looks like the light has just been switched on !!