Is Google having a laugh?

[Vialli]

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Has anyone noticed changes in the serps today?

Have a wordpress site that has been ranking very well for a number of varied search terms for months. Have been adding regular content for months also. Recently added a bulk number of posts with codes & offers, would this be the reason?

have continued to work on site as I always have.

Site has dropped down to pages 6 and below for my best terms.

Nothing in webmaster tools shows any indication.

Any ideas?

[jezaff]

I have found that the "genuine" sites that I run, ie those that exist to really add something to the Internet are always much more stable and much better ranked in Google than "affiliate" sites that I have put up, ie those that, and lets be honest, we've only put up to try and make some money from.

Given that it is Google's goal to rank genuine useful sites I think they actually get it right in this respect.

I think it helps that sites that really become the "definitive" source of info for that topic are the ones that get thousands of backlinks naturally.

That said, if you are on page 6 I bet there is some real dross between you and the front page. How old is your site? I found it was almost a year before some of my successful sites finally settled and ranked constantly in google without jumping up and down 10 pages at a time from week to week!

[Vialli]

The site has been in its current WP format for almost 2 years. Many of the page one rankings, some #1 have been settled for well over a year.

Site is regularly crawled, with pages getting indexed within hours. traffic has doubled over the last 7 days due to new pages that have been added and indexed.

I could understand these new pages dropping then returning as this seems to have been common practice with this site. However the established pages have never been affected until today.

[Vialli]

Having analysed this some more, it would appear that my rankings that were on page one & two are now sitting on pages 5, 6 & 7 pretty much across the whole range of keywords for which my traffic was coming from.

Does this mean anything in particular? or has Google just penalised my site?

[KirstyM]

How many bulk posts did you put up and how much (or otherwise) unique content was in them? How many posts were already up on the site?

I'd say the first thing you need to do is wait a few days and see if your site recovers on its own... but if the issue continues a good place to start looking for the reason is any major changes you recently made to your site!

[Vialli]

How many bulk posts did you put up and how much (or otherwise) unique content was in them? How many posts were already up on the site?

I'd say the first thing you need to do is wait a few days and see if your site recovers on its own... but if the issue continues a good place to start looking for the reason is any major changes you recently made to your site!

thanks Kirsty will sit tight and look deeper into my recent posting activity.

[Cheapdvds]

i would just wait.

i have a really crap site that has no content and never ranks , well it does rank usually once a month , sometimes for 1 day , sometimes 1 week or even 1 month .

it is currently ranking very well and has been for the last few days so i expect things to change very soon , maybe the good sites will then come back in the rankings

[eymedia]

Similar thing happened to me about a week ago - I imported a load of voucher codes and offers and the ranking for the whole WP site dropped off over a few days. It's showing some signs of coming back now though. I think it was too much content too quickly, and possible some duplicate content issues.

Cheers.

[aaclapham]

Two people just mentioned voucher codes, and I know another person who's VC site took a hit.

Sounds to me like Google thinks vouchers code sites don't give any value and are targetting them!!

[KirstyM]

Perhaps all 3 did bulk imports of significant amounts of data that didn't add any significant or unique value to their sites. Come to think of it I also know someone who has had issues with a drop in rankings after a bulk data import!

[Cheapdvds]

have the rankings now returned?

[eymedia]

Mines getting better, but have added some more unique posts so fingers crossed. It was never a particularly high traffic site anyway.

[Vialli]

have the rankings now returned?

Rankings are yet to return. Google is however constantly crawling my site, old and new posts. Is this a good sign?

All pages still sitting around 4,5,6,7 as opposed to 1 ,2 & 3!!!!

[futureweb]

Working for a well known affiliate over a couple of years we always found consistent posting on WP sites worked best x per week, spread your bets m8 regular and consistent content.

[cardiffjobs]

have you added many links to the site recently, I have seen regular drops form page 1 to 6 or 7, usually a 3 week wait and I’m back higher than before. This only seems to happen to the sites I have adopted the most aggressive link building strategy for.

and to answer the original question in the title- yes, Google are having a laugh, all the way to the bank and very much at our expense

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