Can one back-link fluctuates ranking of website with thousands of back-links?

[vtmoz]

It happend to our website. We have seen major ranking fluctuations for our website because of one back-link. What kind of links those can be? Why Google is not stopping them even though they claim that such back-links will be taken care of?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

There are a couple of questions I have:

• Was this an immediate ranking jump? It may have been an algorithm change or a volatile day on the SERPs - you can check with the Panguin Tool.
• Was this one link from a relevant or reputable site? I would be worried that if you pinned it down to one backlink (again, which I am skeptical off), to check that it's not a spammy backlink or has a history of algorithm fluctuations / spammy backlinks itself.
• Did you make any onsite SEO changes to that page or your website? This would also cause ranking changes.

There's a great article from Moz about how long link building takes to influence rankings, I would read into this. Links don't cause immediate change to your rankings, they are thought to take weeks / months, so I would be willing to bet this is something onsite that you did or aligned with an algorithm update. Let me know if this makes sense or you have questions!

Good luck!
Patrick

[dohertyjf]

I think Patrick has asked a lot of fantastic questions around this, but let me just say that it's highly improbable that just one link will cause massive ranking fluctuations like this. Have you done the analysis to see if there are others that have been built that you were not aware of as well?

I'm also a bit confused on your question of "Why Google is not stopping them even though they claim that such back-links will be taken care of?" First off, Google says that they are just devaluing bad links not penalizing, even algorithmically, for them. I don't buy it. I think they're heading in this direction, but they're definitely not there yet.

If you're really concerned about this one link, disavow it and keep moving. Go build good links and develop great content that you can do outreach around in order to get the links that will help you rank.

John

[vtmoz]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for the detailed response. I have experienced this with couple of links few times, where one or two links are affecting our rankings. I have clear figures and proofs for this. These links are triggering the algorithm or vice-versa. Moreover it's not really taking weeks for such impact. I can see in days.

Thanks,

Satish

[vtmoz]

HI John,

I replied to Patrick.

"Why Google is not stopping them.....": What I mean was, Google claims that they will take care of any bad , low quality or spammy links pointing to us to make sure their they don't affect us. But it's not happening in our case as few links can impact rankings and they did. Is Google really accurate about this?

Thanks,
Satish