Totally decimated by "Fred"?

[deniser]

Two of my keywords, both generic products, previously at no. 1/2 for Google have now been booted right out of the Google index after the Fred update.
I had redirected the URL for two old websites (which I wanted to close down), to a third site, redirecting categories to the corresponding category pages on the third site And products to the corresponding product on the third site.
Everything was fine and rankings were maintained for several months until last week when both keywords dropped away completely.
Have I been caught by Fred thinking they are spammy links?
How should I rectify this? Put the old sites back and undo the links? Or should I somehow have told Google that the old sites were redundant?
One keyword I can afford to lose but not both.

 

[StevePoster]

The Fred algorithm update from Google focuses on low value content in which the goal is generation of revenue only.

 

[makeusvisible]

You mentioned that you "redirected links from two old websites".

Can I just clarify, you closed 2 sites down, and did 301 redirects?

if so, do you still have those old sites registered with Google Search Console? Did those sites possibly have spammy/manipulative/ or un trust worthy links going to them?

Is your main site registered with Search Console...if so are there any warnings/messages.

Where are you appearing in search for your main brand name/company name?

 

[deniser]

The Fred algorithm update from Google focuses on low value content in which the goal is generation of revenue only.

Which it is not but maybe Google thinks it is?

 

[deniser]

You mentioned that you "redirected links from two old websites".

Can I just clarify, you closed 2 sites down, and did 301 redirects?

if so, do you still have those old sites registered with Google Search Console? Did those sites possibly have spammy/manipulative/ or un trust worthy links going to them?

Is your main site registered with Search Console...if so are there any warnings/messages.

Where are you appearing in search for your main brand name/company name?

Yes two sites closed down and 301 redirects done for one site and just the domain name redirected for the second site.

Still in Google Search Console, yes. No spammy links particularly. One site had no links as it was password protected (but was no. 1 in google for the search term so thought it was worth redirecting the domain). The other site wasn't a particular target for spammers and just had natural organic social media links. There we redirected every page individually both categories, products and information pages.

There are no warnings or messages anywhere in Search Console.

We are still at the top for our brand and company name. It seems to be just those two particular keywords which were penalised - the two old websites were single product websites with one of those keywords each. The site I had linked them to has multiple product types so the links from the closed down sites were just to the category page for that product.

I have actually now deleted the 301 redirects for one of the sites and the Google ranking of the search term on question has gone back to no. 1 I have put the old site back up too and this is beginning to reappear in the index! So definitely the links to blame even though it was done innocently.

I haven't tackled the other one yet - the one where only the domain was redirected.

 

[makeusvisible]

What cant sometimes happen with a 301 redirect is that Google perserves it to be un an unusual link pattern, because a large number of links may have appeared to a site very quickly.

Imagine domain 1 has 1,000+ links going to it....you then create a new domain, and 301 redircet domain 1 to it.....you effectively just built a new site with a 1,000+ links to it overnight....which can look supicious. I actually saw a new site going under penalty for this exact reason..... it was easy enough to resolve, but it can happen.

 

[MASSEY]

Hmmm....i'm guessing over the years you've redirected a fair few mini sites to your main? I wonder if there's some sort of dislike of sites with too many other domains 301 redirecting. It's pretty clear manipulation, you'd think. to register a keyword domain or thin small site and get it ranking.

Anyway, why don't you just reinstate the old sites and see what happens if it's cost you too much.

You should also be more varied and rely less on google ranks, easier said than done yeah.

 

[StevePoster]

The Fred algorithm update from Google focuses on low value content in which the goal is generation of revenue only.

Which it is not but maybe Google thinks it is?

Google Fred Update is general when it comes to targeting which means every websites that has low value of content and its either a blog, a website, a landing page (commonly used by business to immediately redirect the users to their main site) or any kind of platforms that contains content.

 

[deniser]

Hmmm....i'm guessing over the years you've redirected a fair few mini sites to your main?

No, not a single one. This was a genuine commercial attempt at streamlining my retail business into less websites, not trying to manipulate Google rankings as I had no. 1 rankings anyway.

Anyway, one old site is back up and old and main are both ranking fine now.

The other one I don't much care about as I am discontinuing the sale of the product anyway.