Lost Rankings or Drop In SERPs

I read a transcript of the Google Webmaster Chat this morning and noticed that the Googlers (especially Susan Moskwa) were careful to deflect all questions from people whose sites had recently lost rankings in the Google search results. We just went through a period, a couple of weeks ago, where the Google search results were radically different for many Webmasters but I got the impression from these questions that the Webmasters are still hurting.

We should be careful not to read too much into Susan’s reference to the Google answer to why you don’t see your site in search results. However, that answer more directly addresses the pre-emptive question, “Why does my NEW site not appear in search results” — or the “why did my rankings drop” question.

What people were asking specifically was why established rankings suddenly vanished altogether.

When people experience lost rankings, a drop in SERPs, or lost traffic from Google the Google Answer suggests you:

1. Check your site is in the Google index
2. Make sure Google can find and crawl your site
3. Make sure that Google can index your site
4. Make sure your content is useful and relevant

Based on some of the extremely naive questions a few people asked (one guy all but declared his intention to spam the Google index and was politely told it would probably not be a good idea), it does seem to me that a fair number of folks out there are skating on thin ice.

The “useful and relevant” content response occurred frequently in the chat. A couple of requests for individual site reviews were graciously deflected but I think a lot of people would really like that level of review from an authoritative, trusted source of information.

Given how Google algorithmically evaluates sites, I’m not sure the average Googler is going to be much more authoritative than the average, very-experienced SEO. Sure, the Googlers know things about their filters that we don’t and from time to time they drop hints when people have crossed the line and just don’t get it.

But when you’re sitting in a chat with Google employees, you should pay careful attention to the questions other people are asking no matter how badly you want to get your own specific question answered. Quite often, people overlook the obvious because they’ve already ruled it out in their own priorities.

Whenever Google unleashes a significant (not necessarily major) algorithmic update or data push, some sites inevitably TEMPORARILY lose rankings. That happens all the time. People in the SEO industry immediately conclude that there is a new penalty at work, and it’s obviously targeted at THEIR verticals because there is always “spam” at the top (SPAM = Sites Positioned Above Mine).

Panicking during an “update process” is a dumb idea for an SEO. The best thing you can do is wait it out. But every now and then, after you’ve waited it out, when all the celebrating and joyous shouts of “the farm is saved!” start ringing through the halls of SEO collective paranoia, you’re still left with a site that doesn’t appear in the search results.

Does that mean you’ve done something wrong? Not necessarily. It could just mean that what was algorithmically good and useful content up until a few weeks ago is no longer algorithmically good and useful content.

It could also mean that people are linking to sites other than yours and those new links are having more impact than you were led to believe they should by SEO gurus. New links can, in fact, significantly alter search results these days. Why? I have no idea. It just happens. It happens frequently enough that I don’t fear getting links from new sites. In fact, I LOVE getting links from new sites.

But I digress.

If you build links actively and you rest on your laurels, you can lose rankings. I actually have a fairly competitive page on Xenite that is battling Wikipedia, AskMen, IMDB, a professional sports association, a couple of spammy ad-laden “resource” sites that dominate thousands of Google queries, and even some actual real honest-to-goodness fan sites. Some weeks my page is in the top 5 results. Some weeks it’s in the bottom 5 results. Some weeks it’s on page 2. Once in a while I cannot find it.

I’ve let that particular section’s link profile age out because I haven’t had the time or inclination to update its content. There is plenty of content in the section but it’s older content (for the most part). This section ranks 1st for several secondary queries and in the top five for several more secondary queries. I’m convinced there is no penalty involved.

But the sites I’m going up against are link-rich sites that all have millions of monthly visitors. I only have hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors. I’m outgunned, outmanned, and outmaneuvered. I’m lucky I’ve got the relevance cajones to muscle up to the top 5 for the primary 2-word query once in a while. The other sites will naturally accrue more links than my site even without appearing first in the search results because they get more traffic than my network.

Something John Mu said a few times in the Google chat rang loud and clear to me. He pointed out to people (especially people who asked if nofollowing links would hurt them) that bringing traffic to your site can indirectly help your search rankings. This is why cross-promotional linking has been so important to me through the years. All the major entertainment sites have been using, too. In fact, I learned about cross-promoting your content internally from news and entertainment sites.

Driving non-search traffic to your content will help expose that content to future linkers. The more content you create, the more people who see that content, the more likely you are to obtain natural links.

That doesn’t mean there is only one explanation for why sites lose rankings and drop in the search results. Your drop in the SERPs may have absolutely nothing to do with the links that other sites obtain. In fact, the majority of natural links tend to be very unhelpful in search engine optimization. They may boost your PageRank but except for the fact that you need PageRank to be included in the Main Web Index you don’t really need much PageRank to dominate search results.

Despite what you’ll see naive SEOs say on other blogs, the Google Supplemental Index still exists. It still hurts you. Why? Because Google doesn’t fully index Supplemental Results pages. Now, many SEOs (especially in the SEOmoz community) believe that the Supplemental Index either no longer exists or has been radically altered.

Google never told us that it did away with the Supplemental Results Index. All they said they were doing was eliminating the very useful and helpful “Supplemental Result” tag from their search results, presumably because they were tired of people complaining about going Supplemental.

In response to subsequent criticisms and requests from the SEO community, Google announced that it was increasing its crawl frequency and indexing capabilities for the Supplemental Results Index. However, not to pick on Susan Moskwa, here is where Googlers hoisted themselves on their own petard yesterday:

Q: What’s the best way to check to see if your content is duplicated (accidentally or by someone else). Is there a tool you can input a URL and check for duplicate content?

Susan Moskwa - 5:54 pm

A: Try taking a fairly long string of text from your website, and searching for it in quotes on Google. The longer the sentence is, the more likely it is to be unique to your site (so it’s an easy way to see what other sites have that same content).

BZZT! Sorry, Susan. That dog won’t hunt. Why? Because Google doesn’t fully index all the words and expressions on every page it shows in its search results.

Trust me, folks. I test this behavior EVERY WEEK.

You’ll do better to use a service like Copyscape to search for unauthorized duplicate content. Google won’t help you much and both Microsoft and Yahoo! can only provide limited resources. Actually, if I were determined to find out whether someone was reusing my content, I would use all the services (including Google) and cover as many bases as possible.

They each index different segments of the Web and they each bring their own unique algorithms to the task (a point that at least one of the Googlers made in yesterday’s chat).

Nonetheless, it would be extremely helpful if Google either fully indexed all the content on every page it showed us or just dropped the Supplemental Index altogether. It’s a pain to live with and the Webmaster guidelines I referred to above don’t help people who are suffering from Google Supplemental Results Index Syndrome.

Which is not necessarily the only reason why you lost rankings or saw a drop in SERPs. In fact, for a well-linked site going Supplemental seems a very UNlikely reason for lost rankings and drops in SERPs. Nonetheless, some sites do go Supplemental and then come back out as their backlinks are recrawled.

This strobing Supplemental effect is a natural phenomenon that has been with us for as long as I have been involved in search engine optimization. We saw this type of behavior monthly with Inktomi, which is why link farms were invented.

Strobing search visibility is not good for searchers (who often use search engines as navigational tools and become frustrated when they cannot find sites they know they found before). It’s not good for search engines because it diminishes the quality of their user experience. And it’s obviously not good for Webmasters who just want to serve up some content to other people.

Unfortunately, when you have as many people jostling for the bartender’s attention as a major search engine does, you cannot offer everyone a perfect solution.

Webmasters, however, seem to go out of their way to offer imperfect solutions. Content is the most important ingredient for your Web site and it needs to be the foundation of all your search engine optimization. But the SEO community just struggles to accept the great importance of indexable content. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of standard bearers for “Content is King”. Rather, people just tend to put blinders on when it comes to content. They see it one way or the other.

You have the option of placing content on many Web sites. Some savvy SEOs do this very effectively. Some savvy non-optimizing marketers do it very effectively, too. In yesterday’s chat someone asked if it was a good idea to do guest posts on blogs where you get a link back to your site. The Googler response was so predictable they’ll be setting atomic clocks by it for years to come: don’t do this for PageRank.

If I had a choice between getting 1 link on the front page of CNN and getting 1,000 nofollowed links on as many actively read blogs, I would go for the 1,000 nofollowed links without hesitation.

I am a marketer first and a search optimizer second. I want the traffic, and to hell with the search engines if they aren’t going to cooperate with my plans. I don’t need search engines, they need me.

Which is not to say I am angry at Google or the Googlers today. I’m not and I’m not trying to take pot shots at them. I am just saying that people in the SEO industry are so focused on doing what’s best for the SEO that it has sadly fallen upon the shoulders of the search engineers to remind us constantly, patiently: do what’s best for the users.

If people had just paid attention to that advice the first time it was given, the chat would have been considerably shortened for lack of questions. Your visitors are your greatest search engine optimization asset, and if you’re not leveraging them into your strategy, you’re doing it wrong.