Sudden extreme drop in Google rankings - looking for expert advice

[testuser]

Hi All,

Been working on businesses eversince reading TMF a few years ago. Failed some businesses but some are also generating profit which allow me to work on the big project that will chance my life.

However, my website suffered a sudden great loss in rankings which I can't explain. It happend since 25 august and rankings are still dropping. Not small drops from position 3 to 6 but from 3 to 80+...

I've learned online marketing the last few years and although i'm no expert I do know must stuff that is important. However, I'm looking for awnsers to this drop in ranking for over a week now but nothing makes sense. THe site seems completely fine, doing sales and steady rankings for years. Rankings did not change for at least 12 months. Some URL's dropped a few spots and some gained a few but that's expected. Sometimes there are noticable spikes when rankings drop from 3 to 80 but that is always restored the next day. Now, rankings only seem to drop even further...

There are some updates done to the Google algorithm lately. Mainly Google SERP using H1 as their title instead of the Title in google search results. Been missing some H1 on some pages but that should not cause any drops in ranking. Also, pages that did have H1 also dropped in ranking.

The other update is about Google page experience (loading speed). Search console now has the option to check your site and page vitality. According to search console, 99,9% of all my pages are healthy/ok. Nothing is wrong according to search console. Other sites now ranking in our spot do even have worse speed results when checking with Google Lighthouse/pagespeed.

The last update is about Google link spam. I hardly have any backlinks. I did remove some that might seem spammy. But most links are there for many years. Not used any spam link tactics or whatsoever.

Also, all these Google algorithm updates were already rolled out before 25 aug.

Site been growing in traffic over the last few years althoug COVID messed some things up (site is related to travel and restaurants). Bing does not show any drop in rankings. So it does seem Google related.

I've done all checks I know about and searched for other things to check but can't find any. It simply does not make any sense at all... But 66% lost in traffic also means 66% less sales... looks like we got some kind of penalty for some obscure reason.

I'm out of idea's and options. Maybe someone with knowledge about rankings/SEO/Marketing can help me finding out what the * is going on. In return, maybe I can help you with something related to online marketing/seo sharing knowledge or something else.

If you want to help I can send more details in a private message. Not wanting to spam everything here.

Thanks for reading!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Have you checked for CLS issues?

I know the last update took this into account. I know the forum took a big hit on this in our rankings.

 

[eliquid]

If I may...

I'm the founder of SERPWoo. I built SERPWoo specifically for these issues.

There are a lot of unpublished and undocumented algo updates. The published ones can be found here:

Google Algorithm Updates & Changes: A Complete History

Learn about the biggest and most important Google search algorithm launches, updates, and refreshes of all time – from 2003 to today.

www.searchenginejournal.com

But looking at Aug 25/26th, there is none on that page.

But at SERPWoo, we documented a fluctuation on those dates:

So this is something happening across the SERPs to many people, not just you individually.

What those specific issues are, would need to be investigated though.

 

[testuser]

Have you checked for CLS issues?

I know the last update took this into account. I know the forum took a big hit on this in our rankings.

Did look into that extensively. Google datastudio reports CLS 99.5% healthy. Biggest hit is LCP 4% in red for mobile traffic. CLS and FID are 99% + for desktop and mobile. Also page vitality in search console report 99,9% healthy. If i'm correct, page vitality in search console is related to CLS and core web vitals (and use datastudio as the source).

Also did some checks (as far as possible) on other businesses in the same topic and they have even worse results.

So far I can tell this is not causing the issue. But thanks for mentioning!

If I may...

I'm the founder of SERPWoo. I built SERPWoo specifically for these issues.

There are a lot of unpublished and undocumented algo updates. The published ones can be found here:

Google Algorithm Updates & Changes: A Complete History

Learn about the biggest and most important Google search algorithm launches, updates, and refreshes of all time – from 2003 to today.

www.searchenginejournal.com

But looking at Aug 25/26th, there is none on that page.

But at SERPWoo, we documented a fluctuation on those dates:View attachment 39795

So this is something happening across the SERPs to many people, not just you individually.

What those specific issues are, would need to be investigated though.

Hmm that is interesting. Yea most updates are not published. So I only took a look at the info that is available. But the published ones are not related to that specific date it seems. Makes it very frustrating looking for the exact cause.

No idea how SERPWhoo works under the hood but can you see within any corelation across multiple sites? I've found some minor things that can be improved but nothing big that is causing this major shift in ranking all off the sudden. Or i'm missing something completely..

What would you recommend going forward?

 

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[DebtFreeDr]

I too have taken a bit hit over the past 2 months from Google as well. Typically what I've noticed is that something will drop and then a few weeks (sometimes months) later, it will start to crawl back up.

 

[BizyDad]

I had two clients experience a large jumps on that day. These were recoveries from 2 months of decline.

That leads me to agree that it isn't a links issue for you, because we weren't working on link issues for these clients.

These clients are service-based businesses, and the website's generally speaking are small.

Mostly we were focused on fleshing out the content. We cut a bunch of pages we considered thin content. We added sections to existing pages. We cleaned up some navigation issues.

And one of them had had their H1 "accidentally" hidden on their mobile version of their homepage. Fixing that was responsible for a lot of improvement.

Keep in mind that Google displaying the H1 doesn't mean that there are ignoring the title tag. I do think that H1's are carrying a little bit more weight again. But that's been going on for a couple months at least.

I too have taken a bit hit over the past 2 months from Google as well. Typically what I've noticed is that something will drop and then a few weeks (sometimes months) later, it will start to crawl back up.

Could your articles be too optimized? Are you using the same key phrase in your title tag, URL, H1, other h's, and in the first paragraph of your text?

I've noticed a trend that sites who have been struggling for the past couple of months tend to optimize this way. I glanced at two of your articles and saw that.

Test it. Pick a couple pages, and just tweak your words in your headlines. Instead of coloring by the numbers, color outside the lines a little. "Money mindset" becomes wealth mindset or money beliefs.

Don't touch your title tags.

Give it 3 weeks and see if those pages recover.

And as a word of caution, this pendulum swings back and forth every few years. Just because this is the new normal, doesn't mean the new normal is here to stay.

But you probably already know that.

Lastly, could you make the floating CTA on mobile "close-able"? It's annoying having it hovering over the text. You write good stuff, but I can't spend much time on mobile because of that.

 

[testuser]

I had two clients experience a large jumps on that day. These were recoveries from 2 months of decline.

That leads me to agree that it isn't a links issue for you, because we weren't working on link issues for these clients.

These clients are service-based businesses, and the website's generally speaking are small.

Mostly we were focused on fleshing out the content. We cut a bunch of pages we considered thin content. We added sections to existing pages. We cleaned up some navigation issues.

And one of them had had their H1 "accidentally" hidden on their mobile version of their homepage. Fixing that was responsible for a lot of improvement.

Keep in mind that Google displaying the H1 doesn't mean that there are ignoring the title tag. I do think that H1's are carrying a little bit more weight again. But that's been going on for a couple months at least.

One thing I noticed is that the decline already began at 23 july for our main keyword representing the branche. We were on spot 8 for atleast four years or more, now it's ranked at 63. Thats the only keyword started dropping at 23 july. All other saw a significant drop starting at 25 aug.

The link spam update started 26 july but we were already on spot 26 that date while on 23 july we were on spot 8. Either the link spam update was starting to roll out before 26 july or it's not related. Maybe it was the core update before that but that one already finished at 12 july. We don't really have that much backlinks anyway so I doubt this would be the cause (but still could be).

Did your clients get improved ranking or did others (just like our site) vanished from rankings to automatically improve your clients ranking?

I've also looked at the competetion. Most sites in our branche do exactly the same thing. Even the layout and content is mostly the same. We actually added some text on the most viewed pages to add some quality. Also we have much more detail in the content displayed. But most pages would be considered "thin content" I guess. The competetion has zero text and much more outdated or missing things displayed. Actually, for one particulair keyword the site that took over our spot (second spot on page 1) has the exact same layout and content. It's basically an overview of products from a particular brand. They are on spot 2 and we dropped to 30+ overnight. It makes zero sense to me.

I know i'm asking much but would you mind to have a very quick look at our site? Maybe i'm overlooking something.

 

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[BizyDad]

One thing I noticed is that the decline already began at 23 july for our main keyword representing the branche. We were on spot 8 for atleast four years or more, now it's ranked at 63. Thats the only keyword started dropping at 23 july. All other saw a significant drop starting at 25 aug.

The link spam update started 26 july but we were already on spot 26 that date while on 23 july we were on spot 8. Either the link spam update was starting to roll out before 26 july or it's not related. Maybe it was the core update before that but that one already finished at 12 july. We don't really have that much backlinks anyway so I doubt this would be the cause (but still could be).

Did your clients get improved ranking or did others (just like our site) vanished from rankings to automatically improve your clients ranking?

I've also looked at the competetion. Most sites in our branche do exactly the same thing. Even the layout and content is mostly the same. We actually added some text on the most viewed pages to add some quality. Also we have much more detail in the content displayed. But most pages would be considered "thin content" I guess. The competetion has zero text and much more outdated or missing things displayed. Actually, for one particulair keyword the site that took over our spot (second spot on page 1) has the exact same layout and content. It's basically an overview of products from a particular brand. They are on spot 2 and we dropped to 30+ overnight. It makes zero sense to me.

I know i'm asking much but would you mind to have a very quick look at our site? Maybe i'm overlooking something.

All right were those things might be related. or they might not.

Sure. DM it over.

Sounds like Google just started trusting a different site than yours.

Did they steal your content?

 

[testuser]

All right were those things might be related. or they might not.

Sure. DM it over.

Sounds like Google just started trusting a different site than yours.

Did they steal your content?

Much appreciated, sended DM!

No they didn't steal it. We basically show an overview of different brands. Many sites in the same niche are showing the same brands/products. But overall we have more detail, more deals and more detailed categories.