Postion 8 doesn't sound like a penalty. So the first thing I'd check is your strongest backlinking sites - to see if they've been devalued or penalized. That could undermine some of your ranking support.

If that is the case, then intensified promotion to attract backlinks would be the fix I'd go for.

I'm in the UK and I've seen some of my sites drop too today, I suspect a shake-up. In my experience it sometimes settles back to normal after a day or two, here's hoping!

well, i am observing this drop since friday and just hoping its a temporary fluctuation.

jane

have you done any recent "link building" targeting the anchor text/keywords you've dropped back on?

yea i have done link building targeting the anchor text that have dropped; but i also cross checked the links and they seem to be fine..

Are you using the same anchor text each time?

Hi jane,

I am a UK based business and have seen my postions drop today also - glad it's not just me! I do the SEo for our own site and am very strict on keeping our links up together and as much resh content that is relvant to our business!

I hope it's a glitch but you never know! A good way to see if it is a true indication is to querry your search on the Google datacentres here: [webrankinfo.com...]

Hi,

Can I ask how long your term has been at #1 in Google?

I'm seeing a lot of movement (industry wise) at the moment so it may not just be in isolation on your site.

If your ranking has been steady until now I'd suggest doing nothing for a week. I've gone through this whole thing about three times a year since Google first burped, at first spending days ( and nights) trying to figure out what happened, only to have my site pop back up close to or even in a better position a week or two later.

A partial get around for this is to have more than one site, similar, but not a duplicate. Each should be hosted with a separate company, with no matching content, template, or images. If both sites are optimized they should have good ranking; if one goes down the other at least is still pulling in income. I've done this since 2000 and have never had both sites knocked out at once.

i do agree with Lovejoy. Google is doing too many tests these days and it is better to remain steady..for example, I had an important page completely missing from the serps on Friday and saturday and it is now back again at a higher rank (than before) in one main data center.In the remaining data center it is ranking high as well but not as high as in that data center.

So it all happens nowadays.Disappearance, reappearance etc.etc.

One thing is sure.Google and their folks now strongly believe in one thing "Change is the only constant" and probably they also don't want to keep things stable anymore...

My ranks seemed to have settled down tonight... they all appear back to the same positions so would agree with indyank.

Not so great today... they have dropped again!

Interestingly ..... all the data centres I check give my search results as what they originally were!

all the data centres I check give my search results as what they originally were!

thats good to hear, I was having the same issue with a USA based site that had dropped 9 spots and I see it this morning back to it's usual spot on all data centers as well.

Mine have been up and down again today even though the data centres have remained in the usual postion! Very odd!

Anyone else still seeing this? The OP?

Well... I thought it was over but once again I see two sets of results depending on which data center I am looking at, thought it was over.

Mine have gone back to normal this morning..a couple of places stronger than before... but for how long!

its a week now, my rankings have just moved a place or two up but not retained the original rankings as yet...

I've recently seen something just like it. It seems very much like a kind of "-7" filter on specific keywords.

jane, could you maybe answer these questions? Then I might be able the shed some light on your situation (cause and fix) if it matches the one I recently saw.

.. if your site is old and well established, or somewhat new?

.. if you've been consistently building new links to your site?

.. if it was your homepage or a subpage which rankings were affected?

.. if you've been mainly building links to your homepage, or to your
entire website (and if so, to only few specific subpages or a lot of different subpages)?

.. if your new links were with very different anchor texts or mainly the same few anchor texts (and if so, if it were the affected keywords)?

.. if you got a lot more new links in the few months leading up to when your rankings dropped, compared to how many new links you would normally get on a monthly basis?

.. if you have done any on-page changes, or if you made significant changes to internal linking, in the 2-8 weeks leading up to the ranking drop?

interesting...do you have the fix for all these situations?

jane - as sjxs suggests, my guess would be a -xx penalty for certain keywords.

It may not be what you wanted, but at least it's not a -50!

I've seen google dishing these out more and more, most of the time due to anchor text manipulation/link buying.

sjxs - interested to know any thoughts on fixes for these...

Slightly off topic question:

What are you all using to check your SERP positions? Are you doing it manually or using a program?

We got whacked with something similar in the last few days. The site replacing us is one of five run by the same company. It's a mirror effectively. What they figured out is Google wants branding now, so they are taking our main brand and doing this:

main site.com custom brand product widget
brandABCbagsstore.com brand product widget
brandABCstuffstore.com printed brand product widget

They're hitting all the keywords. They're making it clear via graphics it's all the same company. Google doesn't care, each duplicate product will rank for specific searches.

Spammers win, searchers lose.

Planet13 - I use a bunch of proxy services from across the USA as well as aol and comcast to see the serps. Usually they are all the same or very close, over the last while I am seeing two different sets of results that are bouncing around.