Ranking dropped off massively: 25 August

[EdBen]

HI have been working on the site http://www.schoolguide.co.uk/ we had something odd happen around the 25 of August our ranking just tanked.

• Now there was no warning in webmaster tools.
• Moz weather forecast didn't show anything crazy.
• We didn't do anything major to site.

The site lost pretty much all it's long tail ranking and about 5% of the indexed pages. What could cause this? The only thing of prominence we did was get a link from huffington post article.

Thanks again everyone

Ed

[ColeLusby]

Your robots.txt looks good. Check your Webmaster Tools for any link domains that are spammy (such as links4you.com). It's possible you got a penalty. Are you just now noticing because you looked at Google Analytics today?

It's possible this is a link penalty. However, the only suspect linking domain I see is: http://www.cannylink.com/ - the sole purpose of that website is just for links. That is not valuable. I suggest that you look closer (I looked for 2 minutes) and see if there are any other spammy linking domains.

To remove these spammy linking domains: use the Google Disavow Tool within Webmaster Tools.

I hope this helps.

Cole

[JVRudnick]

Hello EdBen...

That date seems a bit "after" the July 24th Google Pigeon update...about a month or so...but can I ask, was this rankings drop at google.com or google.co.uk?

Up here in google.ca land (Canada that is) we tend to get the changes to the major google.com algo about a few weeks after...so while Pigeon did change many things (like local listing packs, local directories, carousel items etc.) it took those weeks to be "seen" up here...

Could then, Pigeon be the culprit for your drop? Have you been able to drill-down to see if your own site has been re-ranked based on IBLs (incoming back links with authority) or new local directory reviews from say Yelp etc?

[EdBen]

The ranking drop was in Google.co.uk. So Pigeon is possible, but it wasn't a small drop it's fell off the face of the earth.

The search terms we were looking at were localised though:

<colgroup><col width="246"></colgroup>
| schools in low garth |
| schools in low hawsker |
| schools in low hutton |
| schools in low mill |
| schools in lower bebington |
| schools in maentwrog |
| schools in mallwyd |
| schools in manfield |
| schools in margrove park |
| schools in marlesford |
| schools in marsett |
| schools in masham |
| schools in methersgate |
| schools in minllyn |
| schools in nantlle |
| schools in naughton |

Averaging around 10 th.  We are a directory so we didn't have Google local listing entries. Do you think it could be pigeon? The local page are often like this:

|

http://www.schoolguide.co.uk/best-schools-in/Seacroft

|

[BruceA]

Have you checked your Google Business pages.  Google just launched a major update which is driven by Google Local pages.

This might be a possible source.  If your local searches dropped off then it could be that you have not got your Google Business, (was Places) up to date etc.

Keep us posted as this is interesting

Bruce

[Carla_Dawson]

Hi Ed,

Something similar just happened to a website I am managing. Did you ever figure out what happened to your website? I do not have a manual action email in my GWT inbox. I got hit September 13th and today is the 22rd and still no email. I am in Argentina land www.google.com.ar and all updates come later than in the USA.

I am also thinking it is a server issue. Got this message from GWT when trying to verify the Google Analytics code.

The connection to your server timed out.

Thanks