I have a site which is over 1 yr old. Last week, I noticed it on Page 1 #6 for a certain long tail keyword. I started some backlinking since then and it moved to #4 on Page 1. I continued to perform off page seo and now it’s gone completely for the keyword…it’s no where to be found in Google. If I do a site:domain search in google it comes up.
Question is…will it return to it’s old ranking? will it return with a better ranking? As of right now, should I stop the off page seo and link building completely?
Unless you did something really black hat, it will. Newer sites (under 3-4 years old) will fluctuate in SERPS and even disappear briefly. Can’t tell you why, but it happens all the time.
I agree with promoman. It happens to me too. Sometimes it is nowhere on serps then on the next day it appears again on the 1st page. For me there are 2 reasons why it happened. First, maybe google is updating their algorithm. Second, maybe the result you got was from other datacenter. Also, DON’T check your keyword rankings while your gmail is logged in. I noticed that there’s a difference in results while you were logged in and logged out of your gmail.
Thanks for the replies. Never heard of the gmail thing, but I checked cpanel and i’m definitely getting 0 from google now. Also, I don’t do blackhat, 100% white!
Was that the first time that you noticed that ranking for that keyword?
Irrelevant. Google, with it’s billions and billions of pages all around the world
does not respond that quickly to each little thing we do. The move up, was
a coincidence.
I continued to perform off page seo and now it’s gone completely for the keyword…it’s no where to be found in Google.
Coincidence.
Question is…will it return to it’s old ranking? will it return with a better ranking?
Thanks
No one knows, that’s what makes your 100% white hat so much “fun”.
You work and work with no idea of what the results might be.
One guy builds links and his site goes up.
Another guy builds links and his site goes down.
Don’t you just love this white hat game?
As of right now, should I stop the off page seo and link building completely?
Do you really think your link building is hurting your site?
I’ve been on the bottom of Page 1 for 8 mths…I went up to high-mid page one in the past 1-2 mths.
This game is definitely fun, I just wish I didn’t do it with this site b/c it’s the best ranking I have amongst all my sites.
I’m quite certain that the link building caused my site to vanish off google for all keywords. I was on page 1 and 2 for both google.ca and google us for over 10 long tail keywords. Now, not one long tail keyword is ranking anywhere on the Google planet. They’re all #2-3 in yahoo…too bad it’s ghost town on that side of the fence.
So like I mentioned, I was on page 1 for 8 mths and as soon as I began link building this week, it disappeared. It’s been a few days so far.
Heres another one I would like to throw at you guys. I wanted to view the stats of my site in Google Webmaster Tools. I logged in and I noticed my site is unverified. Very weird, because I verified it with the html file in my root directory over a year ago. I noticed that file was 0KB in size. How did that happen? Anyway, I downloaded another file and verified it successfully.
So in the main dashboard, I see this:
Googlebot has successfully accessed your home page.
Pages from your site are included in Google’s index.
Top search queries
Query Position
1 my longtail keyword 5
Updated Jan 14, 2010
This is the longtail keyword i’ve been discussing since my original post. I clicked my link and it’s definitely not #5, it’s no where to be found like I mentioned. Actually like I mentioned, none of the search queries are ranked in google, even though google webmaster tools states that they’re ranked in google from #1-10 positions. Maybe i’m looking at the numbers wrong…I assumed positions mean where google thinks I rank in the engines? I may be totally off though b/c I just checked another site of mine showing #2 for some keywords where i’m not even close to.
What do you all think about this data? Is there anything else I can view and investigate in the Webmaster tools?
I don’t think Google will make your website disappear until you did some blackhat SEO or trying to get unnatural back links to your website. I think you should wait a while and do some natural optimization and get some more quality back links from quality websites.:):)
Google sometime update their index page and that will fluctuate your ranking.
be patient it will cme back again…
use google analytics to see if google banned your site?
I thought it would be nice to update everyone here on my status.
My site came back to Google last week. I’ve been checking several times a day from the morning to the night.
Before it was removed, it was #4 in US…it’s back to #4 position. In Canada .ca, it was #2 , it’s now #1. I’m wondering how/why only .ca moved it up a spot? The backlinking wasn’t performed solely on canadian sites…anyone know how google differentiates rankings in ca and us? How can I rank higher in US?
Anyway, here is one I would like to throw at you guys. I was attempting to get links in the past 2 weeks or so. I was checking my backlink profile for the site every day and it wasn’t showing anything accumulating. This morning, once the site returned to it’s original rankings, I checked the backlink profile and it was showing double than what it was originally showing. It was showing all the links I got before the site was taken down and a couple from this week.
It can also be the software i’m using for analysis (removed).
I still don’t have a clue why it was removed completely from Google for this duration…
I’ve noticed that Gmail thing affecting your rankings. I think that is because your Gmail provides your location to Google search, thereby it increases or decreases your site’s ranking accordingly. We really do not know what Google is storing nowadays, huh?
And with your site being off page 1 after you do some SEO, yes, it does happen and it is temporary. So don’t be alarmed.
So I checked my rankings today and guess what, it’s gone again. It was back for a good 3 weeks and in that time, I never built any links because I was paranoid of dropping it again. We’ll, actually I wrote an article related to my niche about 2 weeks ago and linked to it…so 1 link in 3 weeks.
So now i’m really frustrated and worried at the same. Is this because I didn’t build any links this time? I have no idea what to think and assume at this point. What do you all think I should do at this stage?
