Sudden tumble is Google for key phrase I've been in the tops for since 90s

[KLB]

Okay this is really scarry. All of a sudden this morning I discovered I have tumbled in Google's SERPs for the search phrse "periodic table of elements" I have been on page one for this search phrase most of the time since the 1990's normally hovering around #6 - 8. All of a sudden this morning I discover I have tumbled to page five or #51 overall.

I have similarly fallen in the serps for all kinds of search phrases I am normally in the top ten.

The only change I think I made that should have had any impact on SERPs was I added the robots NOOPD instruction to my header's when it was announced.

Whatever happened with the my site in Google's index, happened this morning because my stats were just fine for yesterday, but today I'm taking a blood bath.

The only other major changes I have made to my site in the past month has been to disable my scripts that detect and block users who block my ads, to convernt over from validating to HTML 4.01 Transitional to validating to HTML 4.01 Strict, I started gzipping my files for those browsers that support this option.

Google is indexing my site (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search). The only catch is that they are showing 155,000 results when I only have 20,000 pages; however, Google has been doing this for about two years now. So I wouldn't think that this would be the issue.

Whatever happened, I need to figure out why and fast. Because if it isn't fixed quickly, I will be really hurting revenue wise.

[Chris]

I'm in the same boat in regards to the number of results:

http://www.google.com/search?num=50&...literature.com

No way do I have that many pages, a quarter of a million forum posts and maybe 100,000 content pages and they got me pegged at 1.1 million.

But I have not seen any drops.... except....

On monday when using DP's keyword ranking checker my survival site dropped from #1 on "wilderness survival" to #9. This shocked me because it has been #1 since the summer of 2001, shortly after it launched. It was also still #1 for "survival" which is the much harder term. I checked Google though and it was #1 still for both, so only the datacenter the tracker uses had it marked.

A few hours later I did the DP checker again and my position was back to normal.

So I don't know what happened or if it is related but that is the only similar change I've noticed.

There are reports of an update happening though:

http://feeds.seroundtable.com/~r/Sea...32/004227.html

[KLB]

Traffic to some sections of my site is off by 95%. This is very scarry. I've never seen such a fall in the SERPs for my site and I noticed a drop in some Yahoo searches as well.

It isn't like I try any agressive SEO tactics and it isn't like my site is a junk MFA site. This is a very serious content site with original content. I invest thousands of dollars this year alone having highly qualified professionals write new articles for me.

Tiny temporary hichup or not, I've got to make sure I recover from this quickly and find ways to prevent it from happening again. I've been trying to diversify my traffic such that I don't depend on Google so heavily for traffic, but with a site as diverse as mine and each individual page or topic having only a narrow scope of interest makes it very hard to promote the site without search engines.

As far as indexing goes there is not a single bad internal link on the site (I tested recently).

[Kyle]

KLB - Survive Outdoors is back in the SERPs on Google today after being basically off the SERPs for over a year. We have 14 DMOZ listings, Yahoo listings, and many 1 way links and 2 way link exchanges.

I have freaked out many times in the past with regards to Google's randomness when it came to my site. Some of it I'm sure was my mistake, when I put an affiliate shopping section on Survive (which was recently taken down - months ago).

After dealing with severe drops in rankings for 2 years now, I decided to work on important topics we cover, make the articles more complete and organized, and get more links. Keep in mind.. this work I was doing was NOT FOR GOOGLE. I was doing this to improve my rankings on MSN and Yahoo. This month, with 95% of my traffic coming from Yahoo and MSN, my unique visitors are usually between 6000 and 8000 visitors per day. My adsense earnings are wonderful.

I never thought our articles on Bee Stings and Snake Bites (both listed in DMOZ with "Bee Stings" and "Snake Bites") would fall out of the top 100 on Google. But thats what I have been dealing with for 2 years now on/off.

What have I been doing instead? Diversifying...

Two kinds of diversifying, developing garbage sites purely for money (hard to do, boring), then expanding your main focus (being env chemistry) on sub sites.

I have some sites that only profit off MSN now. They are for the most part, lower quality sites which make great profits. I can then take that money and invest in long term more important projects. Its annoying work. As we all know, working on websites where you have 0 interest in the subject matter and you know its purely for money are hard to stay motivated on.

When it comes to working on your niche, Enivornmental Chemistry.. again I can share some ideas that I have been doing with Survive Outdoors lately.

We are in the process of taking certain major subject matters and developing sub sites on them. These sub sites are going to cover the topic in depth, and be part of the "Survive Outdoors Network" or whatever you want to call it. This involves acquiring a great domain name for the topic at hand, then writing numerous articles on that topic. This is also a great way to diversify your traffic and rankings. Its also a great way to grow your domination on various topics.

Example of what we're doing.. www.ticks.net. This domain cost over $1000 from BuyDomains, but is a great long term investment. Ticks are a huge, growing subject matter with respectable CPC bids. I say respectable because we're talking about ticks here.. you'd think there would be little to no ads shown.

I hope these specific thoughts help keep your hopes up, and motivate you to grow your environmental chemistry site(s).

(haven't proof read this yet, I will after i submit it.. so look out for edits! )

[Kyle]

After looking more at your site, it's obvious you are very established with your numerous inbound links. The only thing I could say is maybe Google doesn't like the text links you have on terms like "debt consolidation", "loans", etc. I'm assuming this is from the digitalpoint co-op network.

I'm not sure why you are a member of this network?

[KLB]

I finally got around to creating a site map. I don't think my site really needs it as I have been very careful with my site's link structure from the beginning and Google has done a very good job at indexing my site. The site map was around two megs (URLs only). I also confirmed via Google site maps that I had no serious indexing problems.

@Icebane

As far as having lots of good content, one thing my site has never been accused of is being short of content. Even back in 1996 one of my friends commented that my site was so large back then that he wasn't sure where my site stopped and the Internet began. Currently my site has around 20,000 pages (no query strings) including scores of pages of pure articles. Right now I'm in the process of updating my periodic table new information My table is one of the oldest periodic tables on the Internet and one of the most expansive available. I also try to add new articles every month, which are written by highly qualified professionals and when necessary, I send articles through a peer review.

My site isn't a MFA site and it has been around since long before AdSense existed. I take creating unique content and a high quality site very seriously. This isn't a get rich quick scam site, this is a very serious content site and always has been.

[KLB]

After looking more at your site, it's obvious you are very established with your numerous inbound links. The only thing I could say is maybe Google doesn't like the text links you have on terms like "debt consolidation", "loans", etc. I'm assuming this is from the digitalpoint co-op network.

I've been hosting those text links for around a year now and they have never caused a problem.

I'm not sure why you are a member of this network?

Because I'm paid a very handsome sum to host those links and this allows me to pay writers to write new content. Would I prefer more relevant ads on my site? Yes I would, but I don't want to be totally dependant on AdSense for revenues and affiliate type ads have never done well on my site so I must sell links directly.

In the end unless we are doing this for a hobby we must sell advertising space one way or another and I much prefer to host text link ads than obnoxious flash ads or bandwidth hogging banner ads. I'm fairly confident that those links are not hurting my site's SEO and they aren't obnoxious to users so I don't see them causing any harm.

[Kyle]

Oh i know you have lots of good content.. I was just trying to give some thoughts/advice based on my experiences. I am fully aware your site was not created for adsense.

Again, was just giving advice on diversifying across domain names.

With regards to the co-op not hurting your rankings, who knows... maybe someone you trust should reply to that one and give their opinions on putting the co-op on VERY legit, high quality sites (like yours).

[Chris]

Yes, I can't seem to find the links Kyle is talking about, but consider them suspect #1 for causing this change. Links to unrelated sites are a big no-no.

I had the coop on this site, when it was only webmaster forums and there were only 10 people in it. As soon as Shawn opened it up I canned it, unrelated links like that look like spam.

One external link I had on my literature site for years was to my coupon site. I rel=nofollow'd it last year though because I did not want to take the risk, thats just one link, to my own site, and I even tried to make it on topic by saying "To save money on books."

Do paid links even make that much money. I was offered like $65 a month for a link on my literature site, for that little it is not even worth it.

[KLB]

Do paid links even make that much money. I was offered like $65 a month for a link on my literature site, for that little it is not even worth it.

I won't make the amount public, but $65/month is chicken feed. Simply looking at my published advertising rates will give you an idea of how much I'm making on those links.

If I don't see a recovery in the next week I will ditch those links when this month's term is up.

[Cutter]

I have noticed an across the board shakeup on Google for many terms. There are a few sites I type keyphrases in to the engine instead of bookmarking (don't ask me why), and some of the sites have dissappeared.

Shoemoney made a good point on his show tuesday. At one of the SES conferences he was able to actually talk with a google engineer who pointed out specific things as to why his site was ranking below the competition.

I suspect due to the quality of your site you could manage to get some leverage in understanding or getting your rankings back, especially if it is that dramatic. These are real people that work there and they want authoritative high quality sites ranking; sometimes the algorithm chages meant to get rid of spam have unintended consequences.

[KLB]

Cutter,

I'd love to use the leverage you talk about but for starters I've got to get someone to listen.

Like you say there are issues all over the net with people reporting good sites getting dumped. We all like to turn a deaf ear to these complaints because 99.99% of the time the people whining really have junk sites or are trying to trick the serps using really sketchy SEO tactics. In my case I don't use any of these tactics. I don't have a big network containing scores of sites, I don't cloak, I don't keyword stuff, I try not to spam the indexes, I don't use doorway pages, I don't do any of that stuff.

I simply follow the motto that original compelling content is king. I try to add new content on a regular basis (actually today's events have distracted me from my effort to completely update my periodic table data with new information). I try to make sure my site validates to W3C specifications. I try to follow best practices for accessiblity.

I do everything everyone agrees are the best above board practices for website development and promotion. Yet today I'm finding my self buried five pages deep on search terms that I have been on page one since before Google was out of beta. It just doesn't make sense.

[Kyle]

KLB - You really do not have to defend your site's level of quality... this is obvious. I really feel for you because of how much I used to ***** about being in the same situation.

I look at your site, look at your DMOZ listings, look at all your quality incoming links from .edu and .gov sources... I don't think you should worry. Things will pop back.

The co-op is extremely bad. It's the only thing I see wrong with your site.. and it's a big thing.

I thought my site was the worst example I had seen.. but yours takes the cake. I'm used to webmasterworld conversations on these Google problems where no one can list a specific example (per webmasterworld's rules). Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it.

[Cutter]

Hey KLB, have you sent them any e-mail messages explaining what happened to your site?

I would say:

I have X# of .gov incoming links, the site has been around for X# of years, I pay academic people to write original articles, but today I just lost X% of my Google traffic. I don't understand if there is something wrong I have done, or if possibly a mistake has been made somewhere.

There are cases where sites were specifically spamming google and have gotten back in on request after fixing the problem. I would suspect that they would be understandable with what has happened.

This is where I would go, as Matt Cutts has referenced on his blog:
http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py

[KLB]

Thanks Cutter, I followed your advice and sent the following email to them with a reference showing the bad search results:

Dear Google,

Following the advice on Matt Cutts' blog, I am contacting you via this form.

Yesterday after years of sitting at around #5 - #10 for the search phrase "periodic table of elements" our webpage http://EnvironmentalChemistry.com/yogi/periodic/ plunged from page 1 to page 5. My periodic table is one of the oldest periodic tables on the Internet and is one of the primary reference sources for large numbers of the periodic tables that are on the Internet.

This is not a new or spammy "MFA" site with little to no original content. This is an old very well established and respect website has been on line since 1995 (switched domains to http://EnvironmentalChemistry.com in 1999) with mountains of original content and original articles written by highly qualified professionals (site development timeline at: http://EnvironmentalChemistry.com/yo....html#History).

Now I realize that you say this happens due to the automatic nature of your algos, however, I saw the same plummet across wide swaths of our site and yesterday our traffic fell by 2/3 from the day before. This isn't just another natural fluctuation; there was a major upheaval in the SERPs and it would appear that our site is being severely punished by the last major data push and/or back links to our site are not being recognized.

Although Google searches are showing almost no back links via "allinural" or "links" to our site I know for fact that there are thousands to tens of thousands of links to our site (excluding forum sigs and our own sites) including high quality links from .GOV, .EDU and .MIL websites (e.g. http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/publications...sing/cha02.htm, http://ss-cbiac.apgea.army.mil/resou.../chemical.html, http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/people/neveu/...lArticles.html, http://www.bib.ub.es/www3/3dic_quim.htm, etc). In fact the Google search http://www.google.com/search?as_qdr=...roductions.com is showing me 114,000 results that reference my website (this excludes our own sites).

We do not buy or trade links via reciprocal link trading schemes. We do directly sell advertising on our site but the emphasis on this advertising is always about the ads targeting real users and selling this advertising is necessary for us to fulfill our primary mission, which is to produce high quality content that is educational and informative.

We work very hard to provide very high quality and original content. Even with our data sources like our periodic table of elements and chemical database, this information is based on offline research and data compilation (in fact we are currently working on our latest update for our periodic table). There are precious few website in our niche that have been around as long as our website or spend as much effort producing and making freely available the kind of content we have produced.

If there is something wrong on our site that is causing a penalty, I would appreciate knowing what is wrong. It just seems weird that a site as vast and well linked to as ours would suddenly fall so far in the serps in a 24 hr period.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Barbalace
http://EnvironmentalChemistry.com

Phone: 207-797-8202