I lost my rankings - now what?

[florra82]

IMO any loss in rankings could be temporary and some sort of indication that something wrong is there and needs to be fixed (like quality of contents, irrelevant backlinks etc).

[Manish Pandey]

Just a quick note, I found that there was an sql injection on my blog which made it lose its rankings. I've removed the links now which pointed to ******andcialis sites. I'm hoping to see some recovery. So, it'd be good you guys also check for such kind of attacks.

[seoexpertrizwan]

Fresh and unique contents sites are safe with latest update Google also considered copied images.

[sundancerz]

Originally Posted by colinstead

If your SEO techniques are simple and white hat then your site will not be punished long term

If it's the site in your signature...your on-page could use some improvement. These days you need to be firing on all cylinders. You say you were punished..what happened?

[jeresteem99]

I really lost my 3 keywords in Google 1 page. Really hurt me.

[stephengfm]

Originally Posted by jeresteem99

I really lost my 3 keywords in Google 1 page. Really hurt me.

Did you purchase backlinks?

[deepgwb]

what you people think the one who lost their ranking in Google will it be easily achieved within short period of time or will it regain in next Google update?

[divineforever]

Originally Posted by deepgwb

what you people think the one who lost their ranking in Google will it be easily achieved within short period of time or will it regain in next Google update?

The dilemma here is that Penguin doesn't know what it should exactly do. Google knows it because their official blog is now home to list of bad serps that are surfacing after this update. Webmasters are giving one link after the other. So I do think that Google itself will take care of this problem.

I went to other forums where analysis revealed that some of the sites that are topping right now have:
black hat SEO
spun contents
lots of unrelated backlinks
stolent contents
blank pages
and so on!

By the way, it seems some kind of tweaking is going on right now. SERPS are doing Google dance.

But I do see an unusual pattern here (karma). I was keeping updates on their stocks. As soon as Penguin was released their prices went up. It was all good till Thursday. Then FTC complaint form started circulating online as more and more angry webmasters began saying that they were going to file it against Google. It was followed by Wall Street's released news "FTC readies case against Google". Today, stock price dropped more. Stock market closed at 4pm (EST), Google started tweaking their algorithm aggressively at 2pm (Pacific time).

So just wait and watch what happens next.
If your intuition is telling you to improve your site do it. It might turn out to be helpful for you later.

Good luck all!

[satyendratm]

Say no to "keyword Stuffing" and improve your "linking strategies" to save your website from penguin update.

[Manish Pandey]

So, the rankings are back again for the blog which was hit by the attack. Thought to share this with you guys. Anybody else seeing rankings coming back or Google dance please share it here. We'd love to hear your experience.

[divineforever]

I did see an increase in traffic around at 11am...lasted till 9pm. But then things went back to where it was. Probably human hand was responsible for it. Can't tell if it was from the headquarters. Its 2:11AM here in California right now. Google officials are sleeping. I need to see the updated graph from webmaster tools to know how things are going. But there is a lag of 1 day. So I can do it only tomorrow. One of the many top irrelevant sites I have been studying is gone from the first page. At 10am (April 30th here), it was in number 4 position. At 5pm, it went down to 8th position. I was out for a while. Now I am trying to look for it, but does not seem to be visible on any page at all.

[Manish Pandey]

Thanks for your update DF.

Things have stabilized for me a bit. Got the rank from where I was displaced. Waiting for other keywords to follow.

[patco]

Just wait for some days and be sure to get some new "fresh" backlinks for your website. Do the same thing you were doing just before you lost your ranking

[SpiderZq]

nothing has been changed to my sites, all the ranking is same as before. i think i am lucky

[Manish Pandey]

@patco: Can you share your experiences here. What actually happened and what you did to recover from it.

@spider: Congrats dude. We'd love to know your story here.

[divineforever]

No problem Manish.
I checked my GWT. Yes, there is an increase. But I am still not satisfied. Some people have been saying in other forums that we should try making backlinks for our backlinks. Gonna do this to see if it changes anything.

[stephengfm]

Originally Posted by divineforever

No problem Manish.
I checked my GWT. Yes, there is an increase. But I am still not satisfied. Some people have been saying in other forums that we should try making backlinks for our backlinks. Gonna do this to see if it changes anything.

Explain what a backlink for a backlink is?

Is that where you make links for other's websites?

[divineforever]

Its like saving the social bookmarking page (where our own web page link is already there) to a different social bookmarking site. I suppose the users on the other forum just want to if that would work.

[Manish Pandey]

I can see the rankings of other keywords also coming back. Can anybody confirm this for their site(s).

[jjmcd82]

Nope, in one keyword search I was hurt badly 7 of the 10 top results are exact match domains with a lot of obviously bought links. I'm still falling further because now someone has decided to make a bunch of one-page websites with keyword matches - and they're promoting it with the exact spun-content stuffed with irrelevant links that Google showed as an example of what they're going against with Penguin.

Utter disaster.