info [ AT ] redcardinal [ DOT ] ie
Sudden Visitor and Rankings Drop – When Your Site Falls Out Of The Sky
Your site has enjoyed good rankings and lots of visitors for a long time. All of a sudden you visits drop by 60% overnight. The first thing you look at is your analytics. It’s still not clear what the problem is. You check your rankings and you’ve been hammered across the board (and I mean hammered). Penalty? But you haven’t done anything wrong…. to the best of your knowledge.
Well, yesterday the above happened to me. I was making a few changes to try to make WordPress a little lees hungry.
Not sure what happened, I decided to login to Google Webmaster Console. And there was the answer:
It’s incredible just how quickly Google has removed results that may not be useful due to resources not being available. In this case my rankings should return fairly quickely after Google re-crawls my site.
If you haven’t already signed up for Google Webmaster Console I strongly advice you do so – it can save you a tonne of hassle.
PS – thanks to Paul at eirjobs for letting me know about the errors my site was spitting out.
btw. after I submitted that comment I got sent to : +http://www.redcardinal.ie/wp-comments-post.php which told me was 404 error page. Something funky is happening here I think.
Comment by paul — June 20, 2007 @ 11:55 am
No problem Richard, you’ve helped me more than one time in the past !
As for google webmaster console, I wish they had email alerts for the case you’ve outlined.
Comment by paul — June 20, 2007 @ 11:53 am
They’re going to introduce a message centre within the console so that type of functionality may arrive sooner rather than later.
Regarding the comment – I’ve been seeing some less than funky weirdness around my site of late. Not too happy – will wait a few days to see if it settles then move it elsewhere methinks.
Best rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — June 20, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
[...] couple of days ago my site absolutely fell out of the SERPs. I really couldn’t tell what was causing Google to receive 404 errors that Webmaster Console [...]
Pingback by WordPress Mobile Plugin with WURFL Killed my Rankings | Search Engine Optimisation & Online Marketing Ireland .:. Red Cardinal — June 25, 2007 @ 8:21 am
Thank you for the nice tips Richard. I am trying to learn about CEO, but in portuguese (i´m portuguese) there isn´t almost nothing about CEO, so, i´m glad i find you blog.
Hava a great weekend!
Comment by Universos Virtuais — August 4, 2007 @ 11:21 pm