Absolutely gigantic drop in Ranking overnight

[Pwhitfield]

The site in question has been operating for around 3 months and for the first two months was nowhere to be seen in google results (literally page 10, 11 etc for all but branding searches). Then through a lot of hard work and the help of MozPro I managed to build it to a respectable 6th-10th place for the main keyphrases.

Overnight on Wednesday we suddenly dropped half a dozen places or so and were rooted firmly mid table page 2 for both these phrases. Last night however we suddenly dropped from 14th to the very last result on page 10! for the biggest keyphrase where it has slowly dropped through the day to currently be sitting in 8th on page 11.

Nothing is showing in Dashboard, theres no reason that I know of to be penalised, however even if we were penalised then surely that would be the site as a whole and not just 1 keyphrase?

The weird thing is, when you look at the 1st 2 pages of the search a number of items have changed, a competitor which closed down is suddenly sitting mid table while other newcomers that were doing well have dropped, some of the older faces have gone up suddenly.

If I didnt know better I would say that google has suffered a timewarp and is now serving results from a month ago for this keyphrase.

Ive now noticed that the MozCast is reporting very stormy weather last night, surely however this couldnt be down to a change in Algorithm etc, not to produce such a massive drop for a site that has followed the rules (I refuse to link with a site that even remotely could be thought of as spam).

Someone please tell me that google has been glitching and all will be well when I wake in the morning?

Peter

[TimHolmes]

I don't think you are the only one.... it would seem that there has been a core major Google update. See here from SEO Round Table. and it is still rumbling on...

All of the major search watch sites are also reporting a lot activity, some showing gains/recoveries, some showing massive drops.

• Algaroo
• MozCast
• Serpwatch