Why rankings dropped

It will depend on reasons for the ranking drop. If something due to a technical error on the website then it may take 2 to 4 weeks. If something more serious like link-scheme issue then it can take months. Get audit done and then create a recovery plan.

It is hard as it will require a series of activities and it may take months and in some cases, you may not be able clean the site as you may like if the SEO work may have been done by many agencies. It is possible to recover but you should always have a realistic expectation. Google does not provide direct support for search engine optimisation services as it's free.

But you can ask your questions in Google webmaster forum. You will be able to contact Google if you may have received a manual penalty. The best solution is to work with a reputed SEO agency. Google Ranking Dropped Dramatically Overnight A dramatic google ranking drop overnight can happen due to factors like poor link building, duplicate content, technical issues, Google algorithm update and more. Get Possible Drop Reasons. Google Ranking Dropped Suddenly Why has my google ranking suddenly dropped?

Check for Manual Actions from Google A manual action can lead to dramatic ranking disappearance, do a quick read about the latest changes. If your website was ranking well for several keywords on page one in a competitive industry then the first thing you should do is to check if your website is penalised by Google.

Go to your Google search console and see if there is any warning. Also, check if there is any manual action done by Google. One account of a hacked website even got an algorithmic Penguin filter that obliterated their organic traffic. Hey Steven! Great post. Thanks u for nice article.. My experience it tooks some 3 months to recover malware in my sites and still my site get lower index because of that. Yes it took time to recover and seem like seo problem like this need to be known before it happens to my site.

Sorry to hear that Ahmad. Malware can definitely cause a lot of harm to a website. Did you get a message via Google Search Console? Awesome post and we use very similar strategies to find troubled websites. Then look to see whether the owner would like to sell their property. Very much like buying a house rundown but you see the potential in renovating it. Sooooo many websites out there are suffering from simple technical problems which could see jumps across the board in rankings.

This is one of best articles though I have read in a while and you are spot on here. Keep up the great work pal. Thank you very much for this detailed article, Brian. I wonder what did you write to Google in your second reconsideration request? I think the Disavow Tool does not really do anything other than help feed the AI a list of manually found and identified low quality links from SEOs so it can train itself.

You did mention you used it, so I was just chiming in on that. It is a very useful tool and highly recommended to use if you found spammy links pointing to your site. By submitting this form: You agree to the processing of the submitted personal data in accordance with Kinsta's Privacy Policy , including the transfer of data to the United States. You also agree to receive information from Kinsta related to our services, events, and promotions. You may unsubscribe at any time by following the instructions in the communications received.

Your current host could be costing you time and money — get them back with Kinsta. Learn more. Kinsta Blog. Brian Jackson , May 3, Drop in average ranking.

Organic keyword rankings in Ahrefs. Keyword rankings nothing new ranking. Check if Google is indexing the URL. Google Search Console Manual Action. Kinsta reconsideration request. Responses from SEOs in community. Reconsideration request rejected. Sign Up For the Newsletter. Reconsideration request approved.

Rankings return. Keyword 1 rankings. Keyword 2 rankings. Keyword 3 rankings. Keyword 4 rankings. Keyword 5 rankings. Keyword 6 rankings. Struggling with downtime and WordPress problems? Kinsta is the hosting solution designed to save you time!

Check out our features. If you notice a big drop in rankings overnight over 10 positions for a substantial number of keywords, manual penalties are the first thing to check for. If the site has indeed received a manual penalty, there will be a notice in the account, stating explicitly that the action was manual and specifying the reason for it.

Well, Google won't be too specific, but they'll give you a solid idea of where to look for the culprit. Identifying exactly what harmed your site is the first thing you have to do.

In case of onpage issues, you'll guess easily what caused it, since you probably realized the dangers when you tried that grey-hat technique. Off-page issues may result from both algorithmic changes and wrong link-building tactics — or intentional tricks of someone else wishing to harm your stats. If you have no idea what caused the Google penalty, check below these most popular violations and SEO tips for each.

Negative SEO is aimed at decreasing a competitor's site rankings in search engines' results. These activities typically include knowingly building spammy, unnatural links to the site, content scraping, and even hacking the site. Successful negative SEO attacks are rare, but when they do happen, they may cause a big ranking drop across a substantial number of keywords. Your website may be hurt by backlinks coming from spammy sources.

It could happen either as a result of you buying low-quality backlinks or as a result of your competitors attacking your website. Whatever the case, use SEO SpyGlass to generate your backlink profile and check for two things: a recent spike in the number of backlinks and a penalty risk for each of your backlink sources.

To see the links that contributed to a spike, switch to the Backlinks dashboard and sort the links by First Found Date in descending order. This will make the newest links appear at the top of the list so that you can investigate them quickly. Select the links and hit Update Penalty Risk to check how toxic the links are.

Before you disavow backlinks that appear risky, it's best to examine each of them manually. If the negative SEO attack you identified was based on backlinks, first try contacting owners of the linking domains and ask them to take down the toxic backlinks. In SEO Spyglass workspace, for each linking domain that you decide to disavow, right-click on it, and hit Disavow domains.

Make sure to select the Entire Domain disavow mode. You will get all the links to disavow in a single file which you will next upload via Google's disavow tool. Finally, after you disavowed backlinks that had caused the Google penalty, submit a reconsideration request to Google. You can do that by clicking Request a review in the Manual Actions sections in your Search Console account.

It's a good idea to submit a comment with the request, where you can describe the steps you've taken to fix the issue. Google will review your request, and you should get the issue resolved in a week or two max. Mind that keeping your backlink profile healthy is an ongoing effort, even after the SEO attack is over. Regular backlink audits are the best way to stay safe from a ranking drop. SEO SpyGlass is a great help to get updates for your link profile: it gives you progress graphs for both the number of backlinks in your profile and the number of referring domains.

An unusual spike in either of those graphs is a reason enough to look into the links that your site suddenly gained. Make sure to monitor other stats about your backlinks, such as anchor text distribution and its diversity.

You'll find these stats further down the Summary module. Scraped content is another common negative SEO technique, which includes copying a site's content to other websites.

Use Copyscape Plagiarism Checker to see if someone is copying your content to other websites or if your writers copy content from other websites — both are equally bad for SEO. All you need to do is enter the URL of your page to find out if there are any duplicates of it online.

Alas, there are no disavow tools for scrapers. You might want to reach out to whoever is stealing your content, but you probably realize they are unlikely to reply. A more effective way of dealing with the issue — especially if the scraping is systematic — is to report the scraper using Google's copyright infringement report. The use of http to exchange sensitive data with its visitors, passwords, files upload, all this can make your website vulnerable.

Check out Google's comprehensive guide on how to recover from a site hacking attack. On-page violations are something you can and have to control. They often come as wrong SEO moves, like leaving low-quality content, bad user experience, or tricky internal links.

Comment spam is a negative SEO technique that can measurably impact your rankings. Go through the pages of your site that allow user-generated content product reviews, blog post comments, forums and check for spammy comments. Remove the comments, ban the accounts, and consider implementing additional measures to prevent user-generated spam in the future. Use WebSite Auditor to look for redirects that take users "somewhere other than where they expected to go".

This will show you a full list of redirected pages along with the URLs they redirect to. Remove all unnecessary redirects. Ideally, use only s, and only in cases when the redirect makes sense for users. My search engine ranking drops significantly for almost every pages. Thanks for a detailed article that covered various parts of the issue. It is very useful. Awesome article and very helpful. My site also affected recently due to some reasons. This article will help me to figure out the cause of the issue.

Hey, really great article! But still unable to figure out what is the reason for the rank drop! No manual webspam actions found in GWM and not even suspicious anchor text. I waited for few days to rank back that keyword and that keyword rank back on POS for 2 days then once again same thing — dancing! Thanks for this demotions, I noticed that my site is loosing ranking for most keywords that it was ranking on 1st position.

I have check my google webmaster tools to find out what could be the sudden drop in ranking but I cannot find anything to work with. I do not know what to do right now…. Any updates Sammy J? Mine must be a google flux. I have noticed huge drops in rankings this past week. From a few thousands hits a day to a few hundreds. There was a error issue but that was fixed with submission of site maps but yet no recovery. There are no manual actions and links have increased not decreased.

I have lost my ranks and keywords disappearing day by day. I think on page issue. Some time my page takes time to load. My ranking dropped overnight. Why is this happening? Sir, after adding breadcrumbs our sites ranking down. Before adding breadcrumbs our site ranking position is one but now my site ranking position is second page of google. How to fix it? All issues are correct which is described in this post. One major drop in ranking occurs due to ssl.

When you turn on your ssl on website this will ultimately drop your ranking, I think you should research and find some solution for this problem. However I suggest to use ssl from the start as you build your website.

Thanks for your suggestion. Thanks for sharing! Great to find this article! I have recently changed my website domain name but still have the old domain name automatically forward to the new website. But somehow my rank dropped dramatically on Google. I have no Manual Action detected. Could you please give me some advice? Especially google flux, because I was checked before my site performance there is no unnatural links, there is no google penalised,So am really confused to how can I retrieve my ranking.

So while I read your blog,I got some idea. Thanks for sharing us. It only happened to 2 of my posts. After checking the posts sentence by sentence on google, I found that there are some scraper sites that copied literally a few sentences of my blog posts.

I really need an advice from you. Thanks for sharing such an amazing article. Google drops your ranking when you use black hat techniques If google drops your ranking in search engine or penalize your website it will notify you in Google search console in manual actions option. I had a major drop off from Google search for my article. Your article really helped me with the problem.

Thank you so much for helping me. How I am able to recover its ranking again? Now we are working on your points to improve ourself, thanks for sharing this useful and very important information!!

I am new to blogging and suddenly my serp dropped. All my posts were in first search results of google and suddenly disappears… please suggest me what should i do..? I have noticed that sometimes my website drops in google ranking and also decrease domain authority. I am very thankful to you. This is a very informative in-depth article.

I faced a traffic drop on my 2 sites very badly but your article gives me hope. Sure I will apply and boost traffic. See you soon. I have added some more content on my post which is ranked and generate traffic, but after content updation rank goes down why? A few days ago my ranking was suddenly dropped, I was shocked and then I saw there was a penalty. Nice Article, my google my business map ranking down today, I am trying to do recover my ranking, any one can help me please reply.

Razvan, one of my keyword was ranking on the second page but the page was not properly optimized and then I updated my page like I added more content. Keywords in Content and Compressed images with alt tag. I have created many of dofollow backlink for my blog but google not index in in atleat 50 days, why? Hi I was ranking first in some keywords but aftet changing domain name with all ranks gone to more than page But early in the morning faced sudden keywords ranking dropped like it never before there because of last Google Algorithm update what can i do?

We got hit by Google Update ! We were ranking top keywords but now we have to start from scratch. It is really painful! A great post for understanding the issue but still google has been very tricky. A lot of posts on my blog get deindexed even when they are unique and after making so many efforts to better it but still, it shows the same issue.

Any suggestion on it. My posts get crawled but not indexed status even when articles are unique and informative. Any solutions. I lost my website ranking continuously from May Coupongod Anyone can tell me how to fix this issue asap. I have too noticed this drop in my google ranking.

I used to rank up on various keywords on the number 1 position but suddenly my post was not showing in search results. I was not able to figure it out before the article. Great post sir! I read all the points you mentioned but all these things look OK for my site. It was gradual and took weeks. Now, most of my posts are not even in the top of google search results. But on other search engines like bing, yahoo or any other, my site is present in top 10 results.

The only thing which I think might be the problem is that I have not paid much attention on backlinking and I am also slow in updating old content.

Are these factors a reason that my blog is out of the top google results? Thanks for sharing this article because I have to face same problem with my website but now I am ranked with some keywords. This is really helpful guide. Suddenly I saw a drop in ranking of my website. Than I came to you your article and found it really helpful.

My Post ranking suddenly down i lost lots of links in past one week. How to rank back kindly suggest. I have been ranking on first page for a competitive keyword. It has been a month since i got to Google first page. Two days ago,i find now am in third page. Every website owner must memorize this points, if they are looking for long term business on internet. Very Informative article. My few blog posts were dropped from Google,but I will carry them back to the first page, applying what you told.

Thanks for sharing. Sometime it comes on 1st page and sometime it is nowhere in google. Plz help me solve this problem. Is there any algorithm update on December 16 or Because all my keyword, I mean top keywords ranking in top 2 and 1 all drop to over 80 and even Not only for one page but multiple pages. Is this Google flux, I have no manual action. Razvan, can you please shed some light on the issue?

Everything is looking ok in my website no issue. Suddenly my site rankings have got down and dropped to 18th position from The other site of mine has a limited content but it is ranking well. Hey,I am trying to update my posts and the permalink. But in google serp only old permalink is present and new one is not getting indexed. What to do.. Please help sir. My site has been fluctuating a lot. Something strange happened today suddenly only one of our keywords ranking dropped overnight and went from page 1 to page 6.

My website is months older but I was not getting traffic. My website was ranking well, but now spammers have created many spam links, what I do to recover my site rank? When I was posting regularly my website was ranking well but as soon as I decreased the frequency it suddenly dropped significantly. My ranking has reduced drastically. I changed the permalink of one of my top ranked page and redirected it.

But after some days , it was nowhere in google. I redirected it again to the original previous url in order to get my ranking and traffic back. After some days all the other ranking keywords of my website gone down. There was no manual penalty. My website rank for some of the keyword. Dont know where i have gone wrong. Please guide my what should i do in order to get my ranking.

I had a lot of spam links, So before one month ago I submitted the domain name from which I was getting around 15k spam links.

Even after one month it still shows. What am I doing wrong? Could you please help me out? Please help. Thanks for providing such great details regarding the traffic drop. Can you look at my website to check what may be the reason for the huge traffic drop?

Google has really been slowing this down in the past year. I am also noticed a drop in our rankings too not sure what happened there still trying to identify the issue. The remaining links showing in my search console are coming from search labels of the site and there is no link pointing to my site from there. Or what do you think I should do? Very nice article.

Thanks for this. Kindly explain google algorithm in for ranking 1st page of Google. Hi can u tell me that how to improve my alexa rank and avoid these type of error like breadcrumbs. Below is my check list which has no change. No Spammy Backlinks 2. Content Is Genuine 3. There was a lot of traffic on my website, I changed the hosting and now the traffic has become almost nonexistent, will it recover over time?

Please suggest. Thanks, regards Santosh. Thank You dude! Would you please explain google algorithm in for ranking 1st page of Google. Hey Razvan Gavrilas I am glad you have written this post. After reading your post I tried my best to solve Google Rank Drop and it actually works.

This is an amazing post. I think everyone should read and share it. But I have one doubt. Does page speed affect your site position because many SEO experts say it but there are also many websites having very low speed but still manage to rank? Most of my post was showing on the first page but suddenly disappear. But now after reading your post, I will improve. Then it do appear in search result some appears at 2nd page some at 3rd page and so on. I have tried all. Hi Razwan it really helpful. Due to Google Core Update, our websites are impacted but with quality content, we hope it will be recover soon.

My website suddenly lost the rankings its like I was on 4 aur 5th no now its on 12th to 16 no and i cant figure out is that some mention things I have check and they are ok..

I am just Confuse about it. I got a moderate ranking drop, and analyze the full site. One thing critical is that my positions just downgraded from 1 to 4- 5, but still i am in first page of SERP results.

My website was on 1st page on organic search. My website ranking suddenly dropped. There is no on page or off page issues with the website. I am not sure what could be the reason for ranking drop.

I was ranking at the top of the page but after changing my business name, many of the keywords dropped to 31 32 Thank you for all the content offered by the page through your comments and information, it was a great help for some work that I had pending for the university, thanks for everything.

Does google reduce your ranking for applying ads in the phase of your blog? Also after I have activated ads, my impressions have been reduced. Any suggestions? Click here to cancel reply.

By Razvan Gavrilas. You need to understand why your site might be bleeding. It could be either because: Google penalized the site. The site has some issues that led to the ranking drop.

Manual or Algorithmic Penalty Rank Drop 1. How to Diagnose a Google Penalty? You Got OutRanked by a Competitor 2. How to Diagnose This? Keep a close eye on their content tactics and link building strategies. Understand and adapt your strategies accordingly. You should try to be very diverse and creative with your content marketing strategies if you want to differentiate yourself from the competition. Your Site was Demoted due to On-page Issues 3. How to Spot if the Demotion is due to an On-page Issue?

Check your site in GWT and understand if there are any problems from there first of all. How to Prevent Demotions due to Lost Links? Google Just Updated Their Algorithm 5. Google Flux 6. Do you have any other demotions that you would want to add to this list? Photo credits: 1 , 2 Share Tweet Written by Razvan Gavrilas. With over 8 years experience in affiliate marketing and search engine optimization and 12 years in programming and web development, he has gone from Web Developer to Super Affiliate for large international networks.

With a strong focus on everything that is Search Engine related, he developed strategies to stand-out search engine updates. His passion for search engine marketing led him to create his own SEO Toolset, trying to solve the issues that he is facing in the search engine optimization field.

Marian April 15th. Shahriar Hossain May 18th. You are right Marian Reply. Grace Lily September 2nd. Ananya Aswal May 6th. Yes correctly Said.. They are wiser than us. Marina Miller June 1st. Great article, my website post is not indexing… Search console not showing manual indexing… I also share my articles on social media sites…Google has issues with indexing Reply.

Myoptimind April 22nd. Razvan Gavrilas April 23rd. Arjun Chandravat July 15th. App April 4th. Vishal Aswal May 6th. He will not reveal this.. Rosemary March 16th. Will it come back once site is back??

Thanks a lot! Razvan Gavrilas March 16th. You should put it back ASAP and see what happens. Bobby February 5th. Anne March 1st.