Disappeared from google, number 1 in yahoo?

helen@doorstuff · Jun 5, 2009

Hello Wise Folks,

Having read and followed much of the support and information here, and worked hard on my site's SEO, I had proudly (from an index position of nowheresville) acheived page 3 on google for the term "door closer" and page 1 or 2 for many of my other (less heavily competed-for) keywords like "panic hardware", "digital lock", "sliding door gear" etc. This was about a month ago, and for the previous weeks I had enjoyed watching my position climb as I applied various tweeks and corrections to the site.

A week ago I searched google again and, lawks alordy, we're totally gone! Although I was amazed and pleased to note we had leapt to number 1, 2 or 3 position in yahoo natural traffic for many terms. (door closer = No. 1).

Something I'm doing is working for yahoo, but what on earth have I done to upset Google? Any clues?

david64 · Jun 5, 2009

Hi Helen,

Google knows (or thinks it knows) what country a site is most relevant, e.g. the BBC is a UK website and whitehouse.gov is a US site. Google uses this to provide more relevant results to people searching from different countries. So on Google.co.uk, Google favours UK websites although it is possible for websites that are not considered UK to rank higher, they need a lot more and better quality links into them for Google to consider ranking them highly. Yesterday Google made a big change in this geographic aspect in deciding search results and many UK sites have lost a lot of traffic from Google because of this. I would imagine this is your problem. I'd imagine that this could be reverted at some point as a lot of the search results are now providing foreign sites when people would really rather UK results.

Magsite · Jun 6, 2009

Sites when modified come and go, if you've gone completely you'll be back in a few days, normally higher than before, just wait a little bit!

helen@doorstuff · Jun 6, 2009

Hi,

Thanks for these comments.

You're right about the new geographic blurring in google result pages, not just american but australian and chinese results showing up on page 1.

Do you think the time frame of my problem fits with this recent thing? I noticed we had disappeared on Wednesday, 10 days ago, but it I don't check all the time and it could have been up to 3 weeks since I last checked.

I gave it 7 days to right itself before I got worried and started investigating. Now I've read about competitor googlebowling I'm anxious to find a way to search anchor text link backlinks, but don't know how to do this - is there a way?

Other thing I read which is now concerning me, was that you can over-optimise a site. Have I gone too far in this respect, titling my main door closer landing page "door closer", not "door closers" or "welcome to our door closer page" or something more natural? Is this true?

Best wishes, Helen.

david64 · Jun 6, 2009

I've only noticed these changes this week and more so since either Wednesday or Thursday.

I wouldn't worry about Googlebowling. Even if it does happen, its not really going to make any difference in your rankings. I have a way to check incoming link text, but its a tool I made that only works on Linux via the command line. There is a tool that does the same sort of thing, but not so comprehensively called SEOSpyglass. Or you can just go to Yahoo and type in linkdomain:mydomain.com -site:mydomain.com

I also wouldn't worry about over optimisation. You should make your pages for people, but base them on keyword research. There is nothing wrong with your pages from what I can see.

QVA - Emma · Jun 6, 2009

Hi Helen,

Just had a look at your backlinks in Yahoo and you've not been "Googlebowled" you have about 22/27 links in from various directories and blogs which I presume has been done by you and your visitors.

Your titles on your pages could be more informative and include other words such as "Door closers for domestic and heavy duty use".

I have noticed the Google shift too - I am sure it will right itself in time, you may just reappear tomorrow. The last cache of your page was done by Google was 30th May so it may just be the case it is waiting to recrawl the site. When the bot visits it doesn't always crawl every page which can leave some lagging.

It does however look like there is some hidden text in the top part of your site when viewing the cache as a text only version:
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cach...lla:en-GB:official&hs=SSL&oe=US-ASCII&strip=1
I think this has been placed as the image name and IMO it is too long and a bit spammy. As is the text used on the other images and this could be a problem as it is a little "keyword stuffed" door closers all over:redface:

Hope this helps!

Emma

BDR_London · Jun 8, 2009

One of our clients sites has experienced a similar thing we were achieving really good results in Google appearing on page 1 for our chosen keywords, then mysteriously we dropped from the rankings for a day, but sure enough the following day we were back. The research I have done to explain this phenomenon hs that a Google update caused the site to disappear.

If you have not recovered your rankings but you are performing well in Yahoo and MSN there is a possibility that you are in the Google sandbox. If this is the case the best advice is to carry on with your SEO efforts and you will appear again.

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Disappeared from google, number 1 in yahoo?

helen@doorstuff

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david64

QVA - Emma

BDR_London

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