Table of Contents
Introduction
In digital marketing, nothing is more bad news than noticing a drop in the ranking of your keywords on Google. Actually, it is a very common occurrence. In fact, most of the time, the drop in Google rankings is temporary, and you would notice your keywords ranking going back to normal within a day or two.
The flip side to this is that on some occasions, that might not be the case. Well, then you can maybe start panicking a little. But do not worry, there are several factors behind your Google ranking suddenly dropping lower than expected.
Before you start solving them, it is important to properly understand the factors behind the drop in rankings. So, if you are one of those who has been asking yourself, “Why has my Google ranking suddenly dropped?” then this blog is for you. In this blog, we are going to explain the various factors behind the sudden drop in your Google rankings.
Common Causes Behind Sudden Google Ranking Drop
If your Google ranking dropped dramatically, it can result in reduced traffic and fewer leads. So it is crucial to understand the factors that may be the reason. Let us learn about them.
Broken Links
If there are links on your website that redirect to pages that no longer exist, then it can prevent Google from crawling and viewing your content properly. As a result, those pages will drop in rankings. Broken links can happen due to a change in site architecture or a site migration.
One of the best ways to identify this is to audit your website with a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider regularly.
Technical Issues
Check whether Google can crawl and index your website as usual. Slow loading times, broken links, crawl errors, and poor mobile performance can all cause a drop in ranking. You need to ensure that all the technical SEO aspects of your website are up to date and working properly. Follow this simple checklist:
- Check if your pages are returning HTTP status 200 and whether the redirects are working or not.
- Check if your canonical URLs have changed.
- Is there an issue with the meta robots tag?
- Did your robots.txt file change?
- Are your hreflang definitions proper?
If you find a technical issue, you have to dig deeper to find out if it is the reason behind Google ranking fluctuations of your website.
Blocking Googlebot
Most of the time, a sudden drop in Google rankings can be traced back to indexing issues, meaning Googlebot is unable to properly crawl or index your pages. One common cause is accidental blocking at the server or firewall level. For example, a system administrator might block bot traffic or restrict access based on geographic rules. While a large portion of Google’s crawl activity originates from the United States, Googlebot operates from multiple regions worldwide. So, overly strict geo-blocking or bot filtering can unintentionally prevent Google from accessing your site, leading to ranking drops.
Another situation involves the robots.txt file. If it contains directives that instruct search engines to ignore certain sections of your website, Googlebot will not crawl those areas. As a result, pages within those sections may not be indexed or may lose their rankings. The best way to catch these issues is to regularly review your robots.txt file and ensure no critical sections are being blocked unintentionally.
Noindex Tag
Another common issue that can cause Google rankings dropped overnight is the noindex tag. This issue happens when a website’s architecture is being modified or when the site is in the migration process. Web dev teams add the noindex tag when they are developing the website to prevent those pages from being indexed and causing a redundant content issue. Sometimes they can forget to remove the tag once the pages go live, and that can lead to a drop in the rankings.
The noindex tag issue can be easily detected by performing regular site audits and by searching “site:[your website name]” on Google to check whether it is being indexed.
Outdated or Irrelevant Content
There are also chances that you have done nothing wrong. Maybe your competitors have been pushing their own rankings with the same keywords as you, and they have outranked you.
It is very important to investigate and find out who that competitor is that you have lost your rankings to. Review the changes made by your competitor that led to them going above in rankings. Follow this simple checklist:
- Are their webpages loading faster than yours?
- Does their website provide a better overall user experience?
- Is their content more relevant and fresh?
- Are you hosting outdated content on your website?
- Do they have better backlinks?
- Did their content get featured in snippets for your targeted keywords?
Google’s Updates
Google is known to regularly update its search algorithm and SEO guidelines. You need to stay up to date with Google core updates by regularly checking Google’s blogs and following digital marketing websites. Sometimes, the reason behind a drop in Google rankings can be Google’s latest search algorithm or SEO update.
In 2022 alone, Google made more than 4,000 changes to its algorithms. Imagine how big that number would have grown by now. If the drop in your rankings coincides with a new Google algorithm update, then you need to modify your content and ensure that it aligns with the new update.
Google also sometimes updates its SERP (Search Engine Result Page). For example, Google started showing an AI Overview snippet at the top of results for almost every search query. This means you have to keep checking for changes in SERP layouts and Google SEO updates to ensure that your webpages are getting properly cited in the AI Overviews.
Content Changes
The Google ranking systems use the content on your website to determine your relevancy for search queries, meaning your content has a significant impact on your rankings. Updating your content regularly is the best way to stay relevant for search queries. But sometimes updating the content can also have an opposite effect on your SEO. This can happen if the person updating the content does not consider SEO practices at all. Maybe they removed some content that was important for ranking.
Follow this simple checklist:
- Check if the title tag was modified.
- Check if the meta description was modified. Even though it does not directly affect your rankings, it does affect the click-through rate (CTR).
- Changes to headings can also impact your rankings. Check if the headings are proper.
- If you have found modifications in the title tag, meta description, and headings, chances are the body content is also not proper. Check if changes were made to it.
Back links
Another reason behind the sudden drop in Google rankings of your website could be an issue with your backlinks. You either lost some of your backlinks or disavowed some valuable backlinks. Let’s learn about both of them in detail.
Your backlink profile plays a crucial role in determining your Google search ranking. Check regularly if you have lost valuable backlinks because it can result in having insufficient authority and a drop in rankings. You can use tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, Monitor Backlinks, or Kerboo to check whether you have lost any backlinks.
Spammy backlinks can also cause your SEO ranking to drop significantly. Thus, it is advisable to disavow them as soon as you detect them. Google has a tool that you can use to disavow spammy backlinks. While disavowing spammy backlinks is a good practice, it can also affect your SEO performance negatively. This can happen if you accidentally remove a backlink that was actually not spammy or malicious.
Manual Penalties
This is probably the most obvious reason that people think about when they notice a drop in their Google rankings. If you have checked all the above-mentioned things and did not find any issues, chances are your website may have received a manual action or penalty from Google.
You can check if you have received a manual penalty from Google by logging into Google Search Console and navigating to Security & Manual Actions > Manual Action.
Google issues a manual action or penalty to a website when a human reviewer at Google finds out that a page or multiple pages of a website do not comply with Google’s various policies. For example, recently, Google announced a spam update in its guidelines, focusing on improving the system to make it better at identifying spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam more effectively. Such penalties are made to control websites that are trying to manipulate Google’s algorithm and drive organic traffic to useless and spammy content.
There are different types of manual penalties, one of the most severe being getting your entire website de-indexed. You can check this by doing a site query. A less severe penalty is when Google only ranks your website for branded search queries. Check if you are still ranking for non-branded queries.
Conclusion
Yes, it may feel overwhelming and scary when you see your website dropping in ranks after doing so much work on its SEO. You have to understand that it is not an unsolvable issue. You just have to focus and systematically investigate the reason or reasons behind the drop in rankings.
At AONE SEO Service, we have a team of SEO and digital marketing experts who can find out the reason behind your low rankings and bring them back to the top. That’s why many consider us one of the best SEO company in Ahmedabad for reliable, result-driven SEO support. If you’re stuck or unsure where to start, feel free to contact us. We’re here to help you get your rankings back on track.
FAQs You Should Know
What is a search ranking algorithm?
A search ranking algorithm is the system Google uses to decide which web pages should appear first in search results. It looks at many factors like relevance, content quality, website authority, user experience, and more to rank pages. The goal is to show users the most useful and trustworthy results for their query.
What is a helpful content update?
The helpful content update is a Google update focused on rewarding content that is genuinely useful for people, not just written to rank on search engines. It targets websites that create original, informative, and user-first content, while lowering the visibility of low-quality or purely SEO-driven pages.
Is the Google Search Engine still using Google PageRank?
Google no longer publicly shows PageRank scores, but the concept behind it is still used internally. It continues to evaluate the quality and relevance of links pointing to a website as part of its ranking process, just in a more advanced and updated way.
Why did my ranking go back to normal after a day on its own?
Short-term ranking fluctuations are quite common. Your rankings may drop and recover due to temporary factors like algorithm testing, indexing changes, or competitor updates. If it returns to normal quickly, it is usually nothing to worry about.
Can Google suspend my account for violating search policies?
Google doesn’t usually “suspend” websites in the same way social platforms suspend accounts, but it can penalize or remove pages from search results if they violate its guidelines.
