[ChiTown2222]

I had slowly increased my search engine ranking for keyword "global resorts network" up to the 12th spot, so two spots from the first page and a bunch of free traffic. I made some tweaks to my site to attempt to get it to the 1st page and all of a sudden my site completely disappeared from the rankings! I checked all the way to the 13th page before I found my site!! What the heck happened? I didn't do any of the black hat stuff like link farming etc. I'll list what I did below. Any idea what I did wrong? I guess its probably a lost cause now but...

1 hour before 'sandbox': made all the links on my main page pop up windows instead of direct. I also added 5 links to some specific official websites of resorts included in my product on my FAQ page.

5 days before sandbox: I added a new 'Resort Spotlight' page which features a resort, I rewrote most of the content but a small 10 or so item list was pretty much cut and pasted from another site...

Any idea what happened? And can it be fixed? I already rolled back all the changes and rewrote the content.

Maybe its a conspiracy in the algorithm, once someone is about to get free traffic, boot him down 10+ pages so he has to pay for adwords...

[harigovind]

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[SlightlyShadySEO]

Indian SEO firms have a terrible reputation for link farming, spamming, and dirty directory submissions. Most end in penalizations.

But here's how I see it. There are a few possible causes
1)Google algorithm update disliked something unknown yet
2)Cutting and pasting the content got you caught in their duplicate content filters.
3)It's quite hard to outrank sites you link to. Link to them using a "nofollow" link, and you'll do much better.
4)Related to #3. Google arbitrarily decides if a link seems like it was paid for. If it seems like that, they often penalize the site the link is on. Adding in the no-follow should solve that, but it will take a bit. If this is the case, I'd also file a request for reconsideration.
5)The pop-ups are probably a large part of the problem. If they're javascript, Google cannot parse them, and cannot find them. So as a result, your once content-rich site looks like a landing page. Try rolling back that change. Google likes to see a fair amount of content on any given page it's going to serve up.

[ncik]

ChiTown,

You don't need to worry too much. I've had a lot of experience with Google, and this kind of thing does happen - you just need to be patient.

With any relatively new, small website it's very common to see your ranking suddenly drop, actually for no good reason. You haven't done anything to anger Google... Be patent, and as long as you haven't done anything you haven't told us about, it'll be back up to 12th or so in a couple of weeks.

Changes don't affect the Google ranking that quickly, certainly not after an hour, and usually no major changes will happen over five days either.

Don't just think about search engines though, think about usability - having a load of pop-up's instead of direct links sounds really annoying...

[SlightlyShadySEO]

Originally Posted by ncik

ChiTown,

You don't need to worry too much. I've had a lot of experience with Google, and this kind of thing does happen - you just need to be patient.

With any relatively new, small website it's very common to see your ranking suddenly drop, actually for no good reason. You haven't done anything to anger Google... Be patent, and as long as you haven't done anything you haven't told us about, it'll be back up to 12th or so in a couple of weeks.

Changes don't affect the Google ranking that quickly, certainly not after an hour, and usually no major changes will happen over five days either.

Don't just think about search engines though, think about usability - having a load of pop-up's instead of direct links sounds really annoying...

3 months old is pushing it for the Google dance, but it's still a possibility.

[Dylan Phelan]

what's the website URL?

[richrf]

Hi,

I agree with all of the above comments.

Definitely use nofollow on the links, if you haven't already done so.

Some of the changes you made, seem problematic from a usability perspective. I would just undo those changes, e.g. the pop-ups.

When I first implemented my changes and introduced my site, Google gave me a "chance" to do well with high SERP. Then Google adjusted based upon my performance. I was dropped from first page to second or third (it bounces). So Google is being fair, but you got to get that traffic and repeat visitors, as well as current content.

Rich

[Dylan Phelan]

I've never seen any serious change in my SERPS; only a shift from say number 2 on the 1st page to say number 5....

Changes that you made an hour before you got dropped should'nt be the cause.
Also not that Google update your PR on an ongoing basis; and as such a drop in the SERPS would generally occur on a gradual basis.

Sorry if I'm missing it, but give us the URL and I'll check it out...