Drop in traffic last 24 hours plus title tag not correct

[NeilTompkins]

Over the last 24 hours we've seen a drop in traffic to our website from Google.   Basically since Satursday 19th Nov the traffic has drop about 50% normal levels.

The strange thing I noticed is that when you search Google for a search phrase the snippet Google is showing as the title is not the same as we have in a meta title tag on the page and this is across many pages, not just 1 or two.

Anyone know why this is and what is happening ?

Thanks

[ShaMenz]

Hi Tommo,

Without actually looking at your site, it is pure guesswork, but the key here would be that Google thinks what it is serving in the results page provides the searcher with a better insight into the content of your pages than the Titles and descriptions that you have loaded.

This would indicate that perhaps your Titles & descriptions may be misleading or keyword stuffed.

Since the overall result is that serving what Google thinks accurately reflects your page content has lead to a dramatic loss of traffic, I would say it is time to look very closely at the content on your pages and think about improvements that may make them more interesting and useful for users.

Sorry to bring bad news, but I hope it helps,

Sha

[NeilTompkins]

Thanks for your quick response.

These pages have been ranking for very competitive phrases for many years.  Just this weekend, we've seen a drop in traffic which in turn made me run through and check the actual search positions for selected phrases.

Looking at Seomoz ranking report for  November 17th, 2011, everything was fine at this point.  Other pages are ranking OK, just some location/area pages and specific product related pages appear to have been affected somehow

Should we consider a reinclusion request to google as they have reported nothing to us?

[KeriMorgret]

I wouldn't worry about a reinclusion request just yet. Has one of your competitors done something with their site that caused it to rank above you perhaps? Have you identified if it's just one page that's no longer ranking? What kind of additional information can you find to help pinpoint the traffic decline?

As for Google rewriting title tags, they've been doing that for quite some time now, even to sites like apple.com, depending on your search query.

[JordanGodbey]

I believe Rand wrote a blog post about this showing that different title tags were showing up in the SERPs after certain high-authority sites created links to a page with a different Anchor Text than the Title tag. I believe Google was showing the listing in the SERPs with the Anchor Text the other sites had used instead of the page's own Title information.

Check to see if you have suddenly gained a lot of links from somewhere.

[NeilTompkins]

The problem appears to relate to all of our product pages.  Other location pages are fine (slight drop in positions) as are the generic search phrases.

What should we look to check next ?

[NeilTompkins]

Maybe the problem is relating to a recent Google tweet http://twitter.com/#!/google/status/137689499198160898

[ShaMenz]

Hi again Tommo,

Yes, I would say that it is very likely that what you are seeing is the result of what is loosely referred to as a "panda slap". This is why I suggested that I believe you need to look at the content of your pages.

The clue is that Google does not think your Titles accurately reflect what is on your pages and when it serves what it thinks is accurate, less people are clicking through.

If you want to test this, I would choose a small group of my highest value keywords, roll up my sleeves and work on improving the content. When the improvements are made, if rankings and/or traffic improves for those pages, you have your answer - and a clear strategy for fixing the problem

Also, when you say "product pages" my first thought is "are you using product information that is provided by manufacturers?". If the answer is yes, then you are likely to have a serious problem with duplicate content. Dr Pete talked about duplicate content and panda in his recent blog post Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[NeilTompkins]

Hi yes product pages, but the content is freshly written in house with no reference or relevant taken from the source.  So we def do not have a dup content issue.

[ShaMenz]

Well that is great news Tommo so then the next thing to look at is the content itself.

There is an explanation of the two stated algorithmic changes that relate most closely to your issue in the 2nd & 3rd dot points in this Google Webmaster Blog post.

Remembering that your problem is a drop in traffic, it seems that what Google is pulling from your page text is not moving searchers to click through to your site. So the challenge is to ensure that the text on the page includes the most useful information possible, written in such a way that it motivates people to want to buy the product. If you can get this right, whatever Google pulls from the page, it will be more likely to result in clicks.

This is not an easy thing to do, but if you can achieve this aim, you are likely to not only improve the current problem, but also improve sales conversions.

Again, I would run a test with a small number of pages and see what works.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[NeilTompkins]

Thanks for your useful response.  Will let you know how we get on.

[NeilTompkins]

I don't think the issue is because something one of our competitors have done to be honest.  It is a collection of profile pages that have been hit.

[ShaMenz]

I'll look forward to hearing how you go.

I've thrown together a quick 10 question survey to gather some information about the effect of the algorithm change. If you would like to be included you can go to Google algorithm change survey.

Sha

[NeilTompkins]

Further to the previous posts, our problem is 100% related to the title tags and how Google is interpreting them.  For example we have a page with a title

Heathrow Hotels - Cheap Hotels Near Heathrow Airport - Cheap London Hotels

but Google is showing the page title as

"Hotels near Heathrow Airport London ( - Cheap Hotels in London" when we do a cache of the page in Google's system

[NeilTompkins]

This post is deleted!

[ShaMenz]

That is not going to look good to any search engine. Do you have many other external links?

[NeilTompkins]

We currently have a total of 7000 incoming links to our site, of which 3,051 are pointing to the homepage.

Those two domains above that I mentioned are nothing to do with our company and I don't know why they are linking to us.  Should we inform Google of this linking to our site, if yes - how do I do it.

[NeilTompkins]

How strange that today we check our rankings for the profile pages and they are pretty much back to as they were with regards rankings, including pages that we didn't even modify.

I believe either Google had a problem crawling our site, a DNS problem or a problem with the Panda update they released last Friday.

I was 100% sure before that our content, meta etc was correct and couldn't see why we would of been punished.