Google update January 2015

[SilverStar1]

Hello,

In January 2015, google changed its European Algorithm. The change decreased the ranking of some of our keywords but not all. See article for more evidence in google changing its algorithm.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-maybe-19760.html

The biggest change was the keyword phrase ‘Wholesale Silver Jewellery’ which we ranked 1 in SERP, but now we’re nowhere to be seen. However, the change didn’t affect our keyword phrase ‘Wholesale Jewellery Silver’, ’Wholesale Silver’ and ‘Wholesale Jewellery.

We’ve been through our data and see that all of our ’Silver Jewellery’ keyword phrases are no longer showing in the SERP. Further research has shown that our competitors were also dropped down the rankings for the same keyword phrase.

Our question is: Why has this update affected certain keyword phrases, such as ‘silver jewellery’ but not ‘jewellery silver’ and how should we over come this?

Additional Information
If you type in our company name ‘Mainly Silver’ or ‘mainlysilver’ were still showing in SERP, however if you type ‘mainlysilver jewellery’ we’re no where to be found.

We’ve even checked ‘site:mainlysilver.co.uk silver jewellery’ in google search and it returns with ‘no results found’. If you switch the keyword phrase, all our web pages are showing up

Our website is - www.mainlysilver.co.uk

[Dr-Pete]

Google confirmed a core update around January 8th in the US, but I don't have data on international roll-out and most of the analyses of what happened at this point are very speculative.

Your "site:" search issue is very odd. As you said, Google is flat-out denying the existing of pages it clear has in the index. It doesn't seem to be a change in query interpretation or spelling. Whether I use the British or American spelling of jewellery/jewelry, I run into the same problem.

My gut feeling is that this looks much more like a phrase-specific penalty. Normally, this would occur if you were abusing exact-match anchor text (linking from hundreds or thousands of sites with exactly the same text). I'm not seeing any evidence of that. Your link profile isn't very strong, and there are maybe a few too many directory links, but most of the anchor text is brand-related and I'm not seeing anything that looks particularly spammy.

I'm going to run it by a couple of people - it's an interesting case and a bit of a stumper.

[Dr-Pete]

You've got some recent links that are dubious (got a second opinion). Check out this one:

http://www.getgawjus.com/2016/02/fashion-files-springsummer-2016-trends.html

This has the appearance of a sponsored link, it's on the text in question ("wholesale silver jewellery"), and the link isn't highlighted (which makes it appear as if it's more for Google than users).

Are you seeing any manual actions in Google Search Console? This has all the appearances of a highly targeted action (based on specific phrases), and those are quite often related to link-building.

[SilverStar1]

Hello Dr. Peter J. Meyers,

Thank you for taking an interest into our problem. Unfortunately, we don’t believe that article is the problem. The sponsored link was added a few weeks ago but the phrase specific targeted action happened a year ago in January 2015. Before then, all our anchor text were branded names.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-maybe-19760.html

We previously believed it was due to Panda and we waited for the update. However, the update in July 2015 had no effect on our issue.

We’ve inspected our search console and we’ve found no manual actions or issues.

We’re still ranking number one on all other major keywords such as ‘Wholesale Silver Earrings’, ‘Wholesale Silver Ear Studs’ and ‘Wholesale Jewellery Silver’. The issue is only when silver becomes before jewellery but not the other way around.

Possible Thoughts

We previously went under a different URL (www.jewellery-collection.co.uk). When we moved to our current url (www.mainlysilver.co.uk) we preformed a ‘meta refresh’ on the old url in 2014. As soon as we realised something went wrong with this phrase penalty, we removed the ‘meta refresh’ and added a landing page on the old URL.

Before we joined, the previous SEO guys resourced the link building work to India and as a result, has created us a massive directory link profile to old URL (www.jewellery-collection.co.uk) but they weren’t spamming. The anchor text were all brand names too.

When we did a "meta refresh" redirected from old URL to new, Google forwarded all the inbound links of the Old URL to New URL in the Google Search Console.

This issue has also affected one of our competitors www.925jewellery.co.uk with the specific phrase penalty (silver + jewellery).

I still don't understand why only "silver + jewellery".

We really appreciate your help in this matter.

[Dr-Pete]

So, first off, my apologies - I completely missed the 2015 and thought this just happened last month. You can tell that I'm one of those people still writing "2015" on my checks

Unfortunately, a 13-month lag makes tracking down a difficult problem even more difficult. Talked to a few SEOs, as this is such an odd case, and we generally agree that the typical culprits are:

(1) A targeted penalty due to link-building (usually, anchor text over-optimization)
(2) A targeted devaluation due to on-page over-optimization

I'm just not seeing evidence for #2, for the most part, and this does not look like a Panda issue to me. Typically, Panda has wider impact now and wouldn't be targeting specific phrases. The profile just doesn't fit, in my experience.

The redirect problem is suspicious, but so many months after you redirected and then reversed it, it's going to be really tough to sort out. I'm seeing something very weird, though. Run the site: operator in Google on your old site (since it's still live):

site:jewellery-collection.co.uk/

There are two URLs for what seems to be the home-page, one http: and one https:. Click on the cached version of the https: site, and it's a completely different site, for elf925 Jewelry. Something very odd it going on there.

Given that reversing the redirect hasn't helped you in over a year, I think I'd either go ahead and re-consolidate these sites or kill the old one completely. You could try a rel=canonical on the old site, if you're concerned about doing another 301-redirect. This legacy site could bite you in more than one way, though, so I think I'd take it out of the picture. After a year, you may need to try some more radical solutions.

[SilverStar1]

Hello Dr. Peter J. Meyers,

Thank you for all your suggestions in this matter. We would like to update you and let you know that with the recent update to a google algorithm, our keyword 'Silver Jewellery' is back! We believe this was due to an error because our competitors now have the keyword too.

Unfortunately we believe we've lost some sales over the past 14 months due to this error but we're happy we are back.

Thank you,

[Dr-Pete]

Glad you're seeing the site back in the rankings. I would definitely keep digging, though. A 14-month disappearance is not something you want to chalk up to an error, because you could easily relapse days or weeks from now.

In other words, it's good news, but don't let your guard down.