Help Google just nerfed us out of the blue

Hi<p>I work at Google helping webmasters like this.<p>As far as I can tell, there are a couple of interacting issues we're seeing on the site that can be causing what you're seeing. It's a bit technical, but it's easy for you to implement a fix.<p>Firstly, our algorithms recently have been picking one of the following URLs as the canonical URL for the homepage:<p><a href="http://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> <a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> <a href="https://safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://safeshepherd.com/</a><p>For example, I see that the non-HTTPS pages redirect to the HTTPS pages (e.g. <a href="http://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> to <a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/</a>), but the non-www pages do not redirect to the www pages (both <a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> and <a href="https://safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://safeshepherd.com/</a> return content). When we find the same content on multiple URLs like this, our algorithms pick one representative URL, and over the past few weeks the choice has been changing. As of 3 days ago, the current choice is <a href="https://safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://safeshepherd.com/</a> .<p>As it stands, our algorithms are trying to figure out the right canonical URL format, but it's difficult in this kind of situation. You can help by redirecting to your preferred URL format (say <a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/*" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/*</a>), and our systems will pick up this signal, and that will be reflected in the search results and reporting in Webmaster Tools.<p>Secondly, Webmaster Tools treats these as different sites. For example, you would need to verify and check the statistics of both <a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> and <a href="https://safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://safeshepherd.com/</a> (as well as the HTTP versions) as they're separate sites. It may be that you're checking (say) the stats for <a href="http://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> but if our algos have picked the <a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/</a> URLs as canonical, the search queries of the former will suddenly be closer to zero but the latter will be a more accurate reflection of the site's traffic.<p>Hope this helps, Pierre

Hopefully I can help some. :)<p>I see a couple of problems with your redirects:<p>1) <a href="http://www.MelonCard.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.MelonCard.com</a> uses a 302 redirect to the https version. You have inbound links to that domain pointing to the http version, so the 302 negates the following 301.<p>2) Furthermore, your 301's seem to be implemented incorrectly. It works for me in Safari/Chrome, but if I use curl on the command line, or any crawling software I see an infinite redirect:<p>www.MelonCard.com/?from=shadow&#38;from=shadow&#38;from=shadow.....<p>This is likely interrupting Googlebot's crawl too. Certainly worth a fix!<p>A couple of other bits to note:<p>1) The redirect in Chrome sends me to:<p>www.safeshepherd.com/?from=shadow<p>which Google believes could be different to:<p>www.safeshepherd.com/<p>You should add a rel=canonical meta tag to the page to help Google out.<p>2) Your internal links point to safeshepherd.com without the www., but your MelonCard redirect redirects to the www. version. You should probably make this consistent, and also 301 one version to the other.<p>This latter points may seem picky, but Google can be troublesome with this.<p>Hope this helps! :)

&#62; We just completed the transition [301-ing from MelonCard.com to SafeShepherd.com] yesterday<p>Clearly, your definition of 'out of the blue' is not the same as mine... good luck figuring out if the problem was on your end or theirs (hitting the front page of HN usually helps).<p>Edit: clarified transition per comment below

I hit this issue when I owned a .us site. After my site started making money, I arranged to buy the .com.<p>When I made the switch, I did everything by the book (my background is in SEO) including properly 301 redirecting the .us to the .com and alerting Google in Webmaster Tools.<p>The site <i>completely disappeared</i> from the Google search results--same symptoms as yours, with site: returning valid info but the site not showing up in search queries at all for the site's name.<p>This went on for 3 weeks.<p>Finally, after 22 days, it came back up in the rankings. Where previously it had been #4 for its keyword, it came back at #1.<p>No explanation from Google or in Webmaster Tools.<p>(If I may do a brief plug--our rank tracker will help you see if your site is ranking somewhere lower than the first few pages now, and will send you daily email updates so you'll know right away when you come back: <a href="http://whooshtraffic.com/rank-tracker/" rel="nofollow">http://whooshtraffic.com/rank-tracker/</a> )<p>Anyway, I'd have to say that this is par for the course for Google. It will likely come back in a few days or weeks. Time to play the waiting game, and develop some good links from your blog to your main site!

Not my site but this may help you: <a href="http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html</a><p>------------ Results for <a href="https://safeshepherd.com/robots.txt" rel="nofollow">https://safeshepherd.com/robots.txt</a> Error at line number 1:<p>User-Agent: * Capitalization. Field names are case sensitive - the User-agent field should be written with that capitalization Error at line number 2:<p>Allow: / No User Agent. An Allow line must have a User-agent line before it. As records are delimited by newlines, there cannot be new-lines between the User-agent and Allow lines. Warning at line number 2:<p>Allow: / Allow is not widely supported. The Allow field was a late addition to the robots.txt standard, and is not currently widely supported by crawlers. You should consider alternative ways of constructing your robots.txt file<p>Error at line number 3:<p>Disallow: /login/auth No User Agent. A Disallow line must have a User-agent line before it. As records are delimited by newlines, there cannot be newlines between the User-agent and Disallow lines. Error at line number 4:<p>Disallow: /users No User Agent. A Disallow line must have a User-agent line before it. As records are delimited by newlines, there cannot be newlines between the User-agent and Disallow lines. Error at line number 5:<p>Disallow: /signin No User Agent. A Disallow line must have a User-agent line before it. As records are delimited by newlines, there cannot be newlines between the User-agent and Disallow lines. Error at line number 6:<p>Disallow: /upgrade/submit No User Agent. A Disallow line must have a User-agent line before it. As records are delimited by newlines, there cannot be newlines between the User-agent and Disallow lines.

Also, your redirection is weird.. You have a 302 on <a href="http://meloncard.com" rel="nofollow">http://meloncard.com</a>, that forwards to <a href="https://meloncard.com" rel="nofollow">https://meloncard.com</a> which then 301 redirects to safeshepherd.com<p>If I were moving a domain, I would have 301'd <a href="http://meloncard.com" rel="nofollow">http://meloncard.com</a> to safeshepherd.com right out of the gate.<p>Too add to everyone's anecdotal experiences, I 301'd a domain last week and the new domain only took a couple of days to show up in search. I was a happy customer.

You're still number one when I search for you. Proof: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/HnTCn.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/HnTCn.png</a>

Google should consider auctioning support time. Make it into a profit center rather than a cost center. No guarantee of a successful outcome, but it takes the situation out of the press.

"Build for users, and don't worry about search engines".<p>I guess situations like this shows the absurdity and lunacy of people who say things like that.<p>But I do see your blog as the first result. As for why your main landing page isn't #1, I suggest you just stay calm, and wait a few days. Google has a knack for bouncing results, especially these past few weeks with the Penguin update and all. And if you just recently did the 301-redirect, those things take time to get sorted out. (Since MelonCard was still a relatively young brand, a 301-redirect was harmless, but if you had an old brand/domain, a 301-redirect would be SEO suicide)<p>You're still in the index. Your blog is ranking for your brand. You haven't been nerfed out of the blue, so stop worrying and be patient.

Great to see Google responding here. Looks like the confusing 301/302 redirections are the problem. I love HN for this type of community stuff.

I get their blog as the first search result, but at least their blog links to their home page. I'm surprised by how often I see company blogs that don't link to their main site or make to hunt around the side bar for a link.

I just signed up for your service. Hope it helped. Your service will certainly help me.<p>The infographic about beenverified was alarming: (<a href="https://www.safeshepherd.com/beenverified" rel="nofollow">https://www.safeshepherd.com/beenverified</a>) and I have actually tried to get my stuff off of there before and failed.<p>I'm not even worried about my own information. What I'm worried about is the accuracy of it! How can I trust a third party who doesn't even know me to provide an accurate background check when it references PRIVATE databases that I can't even verify the integrity of? My biggest worry is that some day I will be screwed out of an opportunity because of a company like this that simply provides inaccurate data because they confused me with some other John Doe.<p>It would be one thing to provide public records as a service, but been verified seriously ticks me off. To think they have the authority to 'verify' people irks me.<p>Then again, it may be a good thing, because I sure as hell wouldn't want to work with anyone stupid enough to use a service like beenverified.

Um, still #1 for me: <a href="http://cl.ly/371t2b0z1S1C0A170y2e" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/371t2b0z1S1C0A170y2e</a>

For me, all but one result on the first page of "Safe Shepherd" is them.

Ok, so I thought, let me check on ours. Boom. Went from #1 when searching for our company name to not even present in the results.<p>What gives? We had perfect placement, built not through any SEO, but just a lot of people talking about us - had the proper config and everything, recently had a site overhaul that was handled properly, using webmaster tools, and everything was updated in google indexes within a day.

I have to add my kudos to Matt and Pierre for taking the time to respond to these threads. They could clearly just refer users to the Google Webmaster forums rather than answering in detail here. For all the flack Google takes, I have to say that I'm encouraged that two senior engineers take the time to answer questions in a 3rd party discussion forum.

Sadly, stories like this are getting more and more common.

I'd be interested to know how Google protects trusty-worthy sites from the SEO equivalent of joe-jobbing.

If nothing else works, remove the domain from google webmaster tools - completely. I had two sites that lost top serp positioning and once i removed the domains from google webmaster tools, they went right back up to first 3 results on page 1.<p>Google webmaster tools is more or less designed to help google, not you.

Still number 1 in the UK too

You are number one on duckduckgo.Use social marketing if you really need the traffic.

Buy ad words or quit complaining about it. You act like you are entitled to search ranking. You aren't.

sounds like you got slapped?

I think you've been hit by the "penguin" update, which is probably the biggest SEO embarassment from Google in a long time.<p>Unlike other updates which attempted to remove "web spam" from the search results by tweaking some of the parameters, this update (according to many in the SEO community) is an active attempt to catch people doing black hat or over SEO optimization. Unfortunately many legit sites have gotten caught in its net.<p>You can read about it in the WSJ among other places:<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406751747002494.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230350550457740...</a>