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Website Suddenly dropped on probably all keywords

by Peter Emad
26 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a website that was ranking on the first page on many keywords
but 10 days ago (maybe from the 24th or the 23rd of May) rankings started to drop MASSIVELY on probably all keywords
Now this website ranks mostly in the 10th page or the 8th page...which is pretty terrible
I have lost almost 60% of the organic traffic due to this drop
Before this drop I was getting like 2500 visitors daily..Now I barely get 1000

I have checked my backlinks more than once through ahrefs and GSC..they are all good and I see no spam links built and also no manual actions in GSC..and I still rank on some keywords but they are very few
This is really frustrating to me

What could be the cause of this?
#dropped #keywords #suddenly #website
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  • Profile picture of the author crackhouse
    Could be the GOogle dance. I've seen this with many websites that are all over the place and take around 4 weeks to get back to their usual rankings. The best advice is to wait it out and see how things play out.
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    • Profile picture of the author Peter Emad
      Your reply kinda made me feel better
      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Sorry to make you feel worse but The "google dance" does not usually affect sites ranking already, dropping them to page 10 across all keywords.

    Did you do do a backlink campaign or change anything?

    Something is definitely up
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    • Profile picture of the author Peter Emad
      No I didn't do any backlinks recently and I don't see any spam links to my site

      I recently only had like 500 pages with almost 0 content on it and they had no pageviews or sessions
      Could that be the reason?
      I have deleted them all and redirected all there URLs 301 redirect to other pages
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      Sorry to make you feel worse but The "google dance" does not usually affect sites ranking already, dropping them to page 10 across all keywords.

      Did you do do a backlink campaign or change anything?

      Something is definitely up
      I'd agree with Mike here. Something changed and I doubt a Google algorithm tweak had that dramatic of an effect. One thing you did not state was the age of the website. If the content was brand new, the "Google Dance" could definitely have wild swings as they test your content in different positions until it settles to where they think it ultimately belongs. 500+ articles seems to indicate that neither the site nor its pages are brand new, though.

      I'm assuming there is no "love note" in Search Console from Google about a manual penalty.
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      • Profile picture of the author Peter Emad
        It's about 7-months old website
        It's a website made for streaming movies and tv shows online for free so these 500 pages were episodes with a description of the episode and a player to stream the episode
        It's a huge website with about 10,000 pages (Most of them are episodes)

        These 500 pages were made in one day and then we decided that we have to delete them for some reason that this tv shows isn't that popular to keep
        we made them on the 18th of May and deleted them on the 22nd of May
        and I started working on the redirects few days ago

        what do you mean by that? "I'm assuming there is no "love note" in Search Console from Google about a manual penalty."
        I really don't understand what you mean
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by Peter Emad View Post

          It's about 7-months old website
          It's a website made for streaming movies and tv shows online for free so these 500 pages were episodes with a description of the episode and a player to stream the episode
          It's a huge website with about 10,000 pages (Most of them are episodes)
          And you had permission to stream these episodes from the copyright owner?
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Peter Emad View Post

            It's about 7-months old website
            It's a website made for streaming movies and tv shows online for free so these 500 pages were episodes with a description of the episode and a player to stream the episode
            It's a huge website with about 10,000 pages (Most of them are episodes)

            These 500 pages were made in one day and then we decided that we have to delete them for some reason that this tv shows isn't that popular to keep
            we made them on the 18th of May and deleted them on the 22nd of May
            and I started working on the redirects few days ago

            what do you mean by that? "I'm assuming there is no "love note" in Search Console from Google about a manual penalty."
            I really don't understand what you mean
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            And you had permission to stream these episodes from the copyright owner?


            Yep, right there.

            I bet OP had complaints against his site for stolen content (movies).

            Probably a complete deindex in the works.
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            • Profile picture of the author Peter Emad
              We are not the only website doing so...this is a highly competitive niche with tens of websites doing the same thing...if it was a copyright issue the whole niche would have been destroyed

              only sometimes we get a DMCA removal notice that ONLY removes certain pages from Google's Index and this happens to all of our competitors too..so it's quite normal..and that's not the case here...Because my issue right now is that our pages are indexed but their rankings have dropped
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                Originally Posted by Peter Emad View Post

                We are not the only website doing so...this is a highly competitive niche with tens of websites doing the same thing...if it was a copyright issue the whole niche would have been destroyed
                Nope. Sorry to sound harsh but stop wasting our time. You are wondering why a site filled with illegal content dropped. If you are in that line then it only a matter of time before something happens so consider this your something.

                the fact is Google definitely has it in for that niche so its not the least bit surprising if they have tweaks to their algos just for that. No oen could tell you for certain whats going on before knowing it was this niche, and knowing it is now, makes that worse.
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    • Profile picture of the author Corey Taylor
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      Sorry to make you feel worse but The "google dance" does not usually affect sites ranking already, dropping them to page 10 across all keywords.

      Did you do do a backlink campaign or change anything?

      Something is definitely up
      Exactly.


      Maybe google found out a PBN of yours, or there's some negative SEO happening in there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Blakers1
    Something no one has mentioned yet that could be an issue is your site code.

    Look for blocked resources in your robots.txt

    Check for NoIndex tags

    Look at your htaccess

    Then again, if you are still showing up SOMEWHERE in Google, indexing isn't a likely issue.

    Are you SURE there aren't any spammy links? I'd suggest running a deep link audit by combining Search Console and Majestic or AHREFS into one spreadsheet and filtering out duplicates. If you rely on any one place to view your backlink profile, you aren't getting the full picture.
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    Blake Akers
    Webology

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    • Profile picture of the author Peter Emad
      There's no indexing issues...all the pages that were ranking well are indexed but their rankings just dropped
      And I have checked the backlinks through Ahrefs and GSC and they are all okay
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      • Profile picture of the author Blakers1
        Originally Posted by Peter Emad View Post

        There's no indexing issues...all the pages that were ranking well are indexed but their rankings just dropped
        And I have checked the backlinks through Ahrefs and GSC and they are all okay
        In that case, I am thinking you must have triggered some sort of algorithmic "penalty". Quotations because Google doesn't consider Panda/Penguin to be true penalties. I'd suspect that the sheer number of pages on your site are at issue.

        If they all have the same exact layout, there was an update back in December that specifically targeted sites like this and it hit eCommerce hard. I didn't experience anything on any of our sites we manage, so I don't have any first-hand experience here. Just an educated guess.
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        Blake Akers
        Webology

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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    If it seems to be a huge drop I'd be open about how you build your links. Usually a precipitous crash occurs after some non white hat strategies took place. Google is getting darn good at sniffing out any remotely black hat techniques, and in the same vein, is really good at rewarding folks who build links patiently, creating value and building bonds.
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Actually the last two major algorithmic updates were content related and some sites experienced some pretty large drops in April and May because their pages were not adding additional value to what was already indexed on other sites, from what I understand.

    Also the "other sites are doing it, too" excuse didn't work with your parents. It definitely won't work with lawyers!
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    • Profile picture of the author Peter Emad
      Thanks for your respond
      I'll try to identify the pages with low value and bad user experience on my website and add noindex tag to them
      also what would be the fastest way to get them de-indexed from Google ASAP
      I've read that some people suggest adding them to the sitemap so Google can find them and re-crawl them and have them de-indexed faster...is that okay? is there any better ways?

      Also about the DMCA removals these would remove the page reported for copyright issues from Google's index, I mean when a page gets DMCA removal when you search "info:*the page's URL*" you get 0 results...and my pages are indexed so this has nothing to do with DMCA or copyrights
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  • Profile picture of the author satyendrasingh06
    check to the content quality of your website also check your Onpage SEO and technical SEO part.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeremy_S
    Just keep adding your content as normal. It may have been some sort of bot attacking you, but Google is smart enough these days to realize it's someone else and not you doing this - if this was the case.

    Good luck

    Jeremy
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  • Profile picture of the author andrewaff
    I also see the issue in 500 URLs you deleted atonce and redirected 301. This might hamper the website internal links ratio and it would affect much if you have keywords based footer anchor text links. Deleting all internal links suddenly from 500 pages and putting 301 might cause SERP. I usually avoid this higher no. pages change in one shot and do it gradually so that nothing bigger will be noticed in shorter time.
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  • Profile picture of the author xrobot
    content quality very important
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  • Profile picture of the author vacuumscleaner
    That time I saw google changed algorithms, my keywords have dropped a lot, i also have to im my site just know how to watch it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Megan Wale
    The exact situation is with my website. My revenue also dropped to almost 50% and hit website with ranking and traffic. I was assuming Google's recent broad core algorithm has hit me.

    Please suggest what can be done to work it out.
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  • Profile picture of the author wduarte24
    It would be good if you share your url.
    But probably you published a 3th content that Google was "blocking" or didn't want that content websites like yours use them. And as you were on the first page it was easy.

    I think your website was penalized.
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  • Profile picture of the author ordiusits
    Google Penguin Algo Recovery

    The Penguin algorithm, launched in April of 2012 was created to find and demote sites who have created spam links in order to rank higher in Google. If your site noticed a significant drop in rankings anytime back in the history, then there is a good possibility that Penguin is affecting your site.

    Penguin Algorithm Update Dates

    April 24, 2012
    May 25, 2012
    October 5, 2012
    May 22, 2013
    October 4, 2013
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  • Profile picture of the author Daijon Moss
    You already checked all the issues that might cause your website rankings but you found nothing so my suggestion is to wait some time to recover rankings also update your website daily by posting good content.
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