Catastrophic drop in SERPs

[fmc]

Hi All,

New member and first post. Gotta say what a great forum before I go on. Good work!

I've been working in SEO for a while and have, like everyone, experienced fluctuations in position on SERPs. However, on Sunday 13th Sep 2009 one of the sites I work on, 32Red.com, dropped 80 positions on Google.co.uk over the course of two days, from 5th to 63rd and then 85th. It hurts. It hurts a lot. I was just wondering whether anyone here experienced something similiar recently or know of a significant algorithm change that could have caused it. Failing that has anyone ever experienced a drop like it and did you ever regain position?

My feeling is that we've been penalised by Google, possibly through a sustained dodgy link campaign by a competitor using blackhat/spammy sites to link to us. I'm going through all of our inbound links looking for dodgy ones, but it's manual and is taking forever. Any shortcuts on this you guys know about?

Anyway, would entertain all ideas and appreciate any help/insight you can offer.

Thanks in advance,
FMC

 

[airforce1]

Hi, fmc

I think Google might undergo an routine algorithm modification. Some of my keywords drop but others up. Google might prepare for its new engine - Caffeine

 

[fmc]

Yeah, I heard there was a tweak but thought it was on geo-targeting rather than on keywords. Roll on Caffeine - we're still on the first page in the sandbox test!

Apparently we're not the only ones suffering too, with a lot of UK based sites getting hit - big names too. Can't believe no one's commented here though...

Cheers,
FMC

 

[surreypcsupport]

..dropped 80 positions on Google.co.uk over the course of two days, from 5th to 63rd and then 85th.

For what keyprhase?