What can cause sudden drop in SERP?

[Ram8349]

On May 10th, my site was "penalized" by Google. Overnight, all SERP ranks dropped to beyond 20~30th pages.

 

I was told such thing as "Penguin update"? But the time hit my site (around May 10) had way passed the actual hit by Penguin which supposed to be in late April.

 

On May 30, just 3 weeks after it happened, overnight all SERP ranks were restored to exactly the way it was. Then just one day later, the "penalty" came back, and all my articles and forum posts couldn't be found within 20~30th pages again.

 

On June 6, all SERP ranks were restored again to exactly how they were before May 10.

 

What could have happened? I don't have a clue. I never used any link farm service or any kind of blackhat SEO which I don't even know the details about.

[Nathan]

It's the "Google Dance" new sites or new content can do this during the period between full indexes of the sites.

[Marc]

Plus you get other sites who's rankings are going up and down as well as yours. As such sometimes they will be above you and sometimes below depending on how well they get themselves ranked.

[dexterlablab1]

I swear, this is the kind of thing that we need other search engines to become more powerful for. Being under Google's iron thumb is going to hurt us all in the long run

[JHTech100]

I noticed my forum dive about 30 ranks mid-May (when I noticed)... Maybe it was just a dance... If it wasn't, I'll be really, really annoyed.

[Ram8349]

It was really lame that basically my traffic source from Google had become next to 0 during the period of "penalty". Web site analysis showed that traffic from search engines were mostly from Yahoo, while Google had stopped rank in traffic. After the SERPs were restored, traffic from Google is quickly catching up and will be exceed Yahoo's total soon.

 

This kind of nonsense "dance" can really hurt the site's traffic.

 

Because 2~3 days before it happened on May 10, I installed a SEO pack for wordpress part of my site. So I wasn't sure if it made the difference and was the reason for "penalty". The SEO pack is quite popular, used by thousands. It's called All in one SEO pack by Yoast. After installed it, it basically reconfiged all the article titles, meta descriptions etc. in the SERP until I mannually changed them to the way I wanted, which I completed the change within hours. Could it be the reason behind "google dance"?

Edited June 11, 2012 by Ram8349

[Victor Leigh]

I think I would rather call this the Google Gyrations. Gyrations as in movements that go round and round. Google has to keep on changing to catch up with the scammers who think up new ideas to get around Google's algorithms. And when Google makes a change, the scammers would scramble to find another way to get round Google. So it goes on round and round and round. Google Gyrations.

 

What to do?

 

I take the easy way out. I just do what I should do which is publish quality content on my site. After all, my site is meant for human visitors, not search engines. I haven't heard of search engines buying anything on a website. Have you?

[Ram8349]

I think I would rather call this the Google Gyrations. Gyrations as in movements that go round and round. Google has to keep on changing to catch up with the scammers who think up new ideas to get around Google's algorithms. And when Google makes a change, the scammers would scramble to find another way to get round Google. So it goes on round and round and round. Google Gyrations.

 

What to do?

 

I take the easy way out. I just do what I should do which is publish quality content on my site. After all, my site is meant for human visitors, not search engines. I haven't heard of search engines buying anything on a website. Have you?

 

I abosutely had done nothing that search engines should hate.

The site was just started a little over 3 months ago. The amount of content isn't huge, but it's not tiny either. 9 articles so far with about 400 threads on the forum. I still have no idea what happened, even though it's totally fine now.

 

Sure we don't write articles for search engines, but without search engines we don't get much traffic at all. Search engines have to like them first before the human readers. Nobody can even see your articles if they are not on the first a few pages of SERP ranking. When the "penalty" took place, my best article was on page 42 overnight from page 2. Nobody would go that far in their search for keyword.

Edited June 11, 2012 by Ram8349

[bryce12]

Did someone create bad backlinks for your site? I know it sounds vicious but now its possible to negative SEO your competitors. Just have a look at the backlinks for your site and see if you spot anything suspicious?

[Ram8349]

My site was less than 3 months old by the time the SERP suddenly dropped. My traffic was pathetic to begin with. So were the amount of activities on the forum. There is no competitor would see me as a threat. Not to mention, I believe I read it somewhere that negative SEO is a myth. No competitor should be able to do anything about your SERP rank. Or everyone would be spending time to sabortage their competitors intead of working SEO on their own sites.

[tetutato]

I believe the google dance only happens when your serp is increasing with SEO. Once it gets to first place, etc. it stays there without "dancing" as long as you keep up the work.

[Ram8349]

I believe the google dance only happens when your serp is increasing with SEO. Once it gets to first place, etc. it stays there without "dancing" as long as you keep up the work.

 

They did not increase. All SERPs have been restored to exactly previous ranks. It was a big scare to me though. I had no idea what happened, how long it will last, or even if it will ever recover again. Think about all the work I had put into it... it was just scary lol... It's all good now though, and I hope it never happen again.