Why Did My Site's
Google Ranking Drop?

There are many reasons why a site will drop in the rankings, so I've compiled a list of the most common reasons here. Start here, but once you've taken care of any of the ranking issues I describe, be sure to check Google's Guidelines For Webmasters to be sure you're in compliance.

1. Loss of PageRank/Link Popularity: One or more links to your site that had been providing a significant amount of PageRank strength to your site have been removed/deleted, moved to a new, unranked page, or the PageRank of the originating site has dropped (for similar reasons). Sites with low to modest PageRank often obtain the bulk of their link strength from a small number of links. So the loss of even one of them can have a major impact on their rankings. If you've been buying text link ads, you should know that Google has been actively penalizing sites that sell such ads, which makes their links worthless for search engine ranking purposes. If your site's rankings were helped by such links in the past, a Google penalty on those links could easily cause your rankings to drop.


2. Change in the Search Engine Ranking Algorithm: Search engines are constantly changing the methods they use to rank websites in order to improve the general quality of their search results and to weed out the sites that are resorting to various tricks (ie. so-called "black hat" optimization techniques) to artificially boost their rankings. For the past two years or so, Google has been making major changes to their algorithm on a fairly frequent basis. Yahoo! has been moving much more slowly, with only one or two major changes per year. MSN is too new to determine what their usual practice will be over time. The point is that search engines do change their methods and you can't expect your rankings to remain unchanged forever.


3. Penalty: The search engines are getting very aggressive about violations of their guidelines and are quick to punish some transgressions. Some of the most common causes of penalties include:
   
   
   • Having multiple domain names pointing to the same site is a common mistake that new webmasters make, thinking that it will lead to better rankings when just the opposite is true. While this practice doesn't usually trigger an actual penalty, the search engines' methods for filtering out duplicate content can damage your rankings.
   
   
   • Linking to a penalized, or so-called "bad neighborhood" site is another mistake that a novice might make without knowing that he may be doing something in violation of the search engines guidelines. Make sure that any site you link to is one that you would be happy to have your users visit and that has a majority of its pages included in Google's index.
   
   
   • Hidden text is another bad idea. Don't hide text by making it the same color as the page background. Google sniffs that out very easily these days and can get you a significant penalty. This doesn't mean you can't use CSS methods for drop-down menus or to keep content invisible until a user requests it (by mouseovers or clicks). As long as there is a legitimate reason for using CSS in this manner, you won't be penalized.
   
   
   • Excessive Link Exchanges. Yes, I know that I recommend link exchanges for new websites and I also know that Google discourages the practice. But their warnings are ambiguous and their actions are easier to interpret. Limit your link exchanges to related sites. A couple of dozen is all you need to get your site on the right track, not hundreds or thousands. Don't do massive exchanges through automated programs that create link exchange directories on your site. They don't improve your rankings and are likely to reduce Google's level of trust for your site. Trust is a term you will run into more and more as you study Search Engine Optimization. Both Google and Yahoo! use that term.
   
   
4. The Dreaded Missing WWWs Syndrome: My personal favorite. Without changing a thing on your site, you can fall victim to this problem in Google. All it takes is someone linking to your site with the wrong version of your URL and you can start to have some problems. Fortunately, you can recover easily from this one. See SEO Tips Page 9 for details.


5. Bad or broken links: If one of your internal pages is critical to your site's success - either for its ability to draw traffic by its high search engine ranking or because its a critical navigation page - making a typographical error in a link can mean a major section of your site is suddenly disconnected from the rest of your site and therefore vulnerable to being dropped by the search engines. Normally, a critical page will have several links, but novices will sometimes fall victim to this error. The cure is to make a habit of regularly using a link checker like the free utility Xenu Link Sleuth, or the W3C's Link Checker.

Google offers webmasters substantial help through their Webmaster Tools. You can get a detailed analysis of your site's status in Google there. But for websites that have been penalized, there is a form called the "Reconsideration Request" form that lets you tell Google that you have repaired any violations you found and ask that any penalties be removed. While Google's automatic systems will usually remove a penalty if a site has been brought into compliance, filing a Reconsideration Request can speed the process along be several weeks or months.