Why have my rankings suddenly plummeted?

[harrygardiner]

My site has been ranking well for the last couple of weeks on it's primary term "glee fansite" and now the rankings literally plummeted 5 days ago and now it is around 22 for "glee fansite" and many of it's other terms have just dropped out completely!

Is it likely the rankings will come back if I keep on with my current strategy or will I need to start from scratch?

Thanks!

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[lethal0r]

it may still go back up, my sites occasionally drop for a few days and then go back to normal. never sure why. so I wouldn't panic yet.

your backlink profile could do with some links from real quality sites.

[Nightwing]

HI Hg,

I too have experienced this type of behaviour. If i was in your shoes I'd leave it for at least a week if the rankings show no signs of recovery heres what i's do next:

1. Go into your webmaster tools and isolate and resolve any crawl issues i.e Broken links, duplicate content etc.
2. Make sure youve got an upp to date xml sute map in place
3. Make sure your site has a user site map in place
4. Make sure your inbound link building strategy isnyt just targeting "commercial terms" eg "glee fansite" the Google Algorithm Penguin update is onto this
5. Make sure your ranking score is accurate e.g measure it through a paid for package eg Web CEO

I too am in a similar boat and if you have been hit by the penguin update I'm trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do about it apart from the nuclear option of changing hosts and starting all over again

[harrygardiner]

Thanks guys! I'll try to wait it out for a while!

[Jeepster]

I'm in a similar boat -- interested to find out how it panned out for you.

[Jeepster]

As mentioned below, I'm in a similar position:

My understanding is that User/XML site maps are an issue only if you're not getting all your pages crawled.

Also, if there were an issue about anchor-heavy inbound text, would there not be a message in Google Webmaster Tools?