Recent Algo Change

[RobSchofield]

I was wondering if anybody can shed some light on any recent changes to the Google algorithm in Australia. A competitor, www.manwithavan.com.au has always been number 1 for the most competitive search term in our industry "removalists melbourne". However, in the last week, they have fallen out of the the SERPS and are now (according to MOZ) ranking outside the top 50.

As far as l can tell, they have a really well optimized site with good structure, great text and updated content. They are very active within social media circles and have some really good external links.

Can anybody tell me why they would have been hit so badly. The reason l ask is that i want to make sure we don't make the same mistake.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[GPainter]

Are they in the SERPs what so ever? They may have been hit by panda or penguin, how about any of the other rankings have they changed ? Have you checked outside of Moz to confirm ?

If you go by the webmaster guidelines you can't go far wrong.

It could be they were up to some shady practices and got penalized for as such.

[TomRayner]

Hi Robert

According to Algaroo, a tool that tracks the level of volatility in Google AU, there doesn't look to be anything out of the ordinary in the last few days.

I jumped into MajesticSEO to have a look at their backlinks, and what struck me was that out of their top 50 links (according to Majestic), around 20 of them have been deleted on the 21st and 22nd of September.

I'm also looking at their links on a whole - there are a lot of blogroll links, which looks quite unnatural, plus a number of directory links (which aren't necessarily bad but may have been devalued).  A number of these blogrolls were site wide, so the deleted ones will have resulted in a very sharp fall in the number of links.

I can only speculate as to why those links were removed - whether prompted by Google or not - but it's clear that either removing them has caused the drop, or they have been prompted to remove them by Google after finding out about their link scheme (if it was one). Similarly the massive amount of directory links could be the cause - not because they're penalised, but because they have been devalued.

Hope that helps.

[Jonathan1979]

Checking Ahrefs it is clear they have been hit by a penalty.  They have over 700 exact match anchors for "man with a van" for example from just 30 domains, which makes up 67% of their backlinks!

[AlanMosley]

Good work Holmes

[TomRayner]

Elementary, my dear Mosley.