Sudden drop in search results

#424080
  • Resolved Maps Over Coffee

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi friends,
    Last Saturday I experienced a major crash in rankings. About 90% of my keywords disappeared from Google search. I have gone from 100-175 sessions per day down to 15-25.

    When looking at Google Search Console, everything checks out. Except that my posts are all “indexed, but not submitted in sitemap”. I checked the sitemap and they all seem to be there.

    Additionally, the sitemap shows that it hasn’t updated since 5/2022. But the included urls have been submitted since then.

    Even more confusing is that some of my keywords are still ranking in the top 10 while related and similar keywords have dropped out completely.

    I am trying to turn every stone over.

    I ran out of caching on Nitropack, so they stopped caching a few days ago. I don’t think that should be an issue, but I turned it off and switched to WP3 and Autoptimize.

    I published a couple of guest posts recently, but I can’t imagine how that would affect the rankings of the rest of my site.

    I had a server error on a few pages but that has been resolved.

    If you can give me any help, advice, or direction I would be most appreciative.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Anas

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math, and sorry for any inconvenience caused.

    The Indexed, Not Submitted in Sitemap is not an issue, it only means that Google has already indexed the posts but not through the sitemap.

    It is possible that Google is crawling your website and indexing the posts through the internal links on your website and not through the sitemap, and as a result, the crawl budget for your website is exhausted and Google is not able to discover the URLs through your sitemap.

    Can you please check if there are any other Coverage issues reported in the Search Console?

    We look forward to helping you.

    Maps Over Coffee

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi Anas,
    Thank you for your response.
    I have a server error (5xx) on 22 pages. They are all category, tag, and archive pages unrelated to the posts that dropped in ranking. The status is pending, but I verified last week that these were resolved on my own. Previously I would get the 5xx notification when trying to find these urls.

    I had a redirect error on a few pages. I started the validation on 5/1/22 and coincidentally it passed on 7/16/22 – the same day that my rankings dropped.

    Could that have something to do with it?

    Maps Over Coffee

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi Anas,
    It looks like my XML Sitemap is tagged nofollow. How do I change that?

    Jaideep Asrani

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Hello,

    The validation success shouldn’t cause a drop in the search traffic of your site. It could be related to Google’s algorithm update as it affects the traffic of the sites. You can follow this guide to help you recover from it: https://rankmath.com/blog/google-algorithm-update-recovery/

    And can you please confirm where you are seeing the issue with the sitemap being set as Nofollow? The sitemaps are set as Noindex and Nofollow as the sitemaps are not meant to be indexed in the SERPs, they are only there for search engines to discover the URLs.

    Hope this helps. Let us know if you need any other assistance.

    Maps Over Coffee

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Thank you for your response Jaideep.

    I didn’t realize the sitemaps are set to nofollow.

    The reason I bring this up is that none of my urls are being found in the sitemap by Google. Every one of them that I inspect comes back “Indexed, not submitted in sitemap”. But I can find them in the sitemap.

    I could understand an algorithm update being the issue. But I would expect that if Google found something wrong with the site I would lose 100% of my keywords. But for each page, some of the keywords are still ranking on page 1 while others are completely missing.

    I don’t understand how some would just drop out of Google SERPs altogether. Even closely related keywords have always had a similar ranking, within 10 points or so. But not 100+ point difference.

    Any ideas?

    Nigel

    3 years, 4 months ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Since your index coverage report seems to be fine, it’s difficult to say exactly what the issue is with your website. However, I came across a report of multiple websites receiving large drops in traffic on July 16th which might be related to your issue: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-algorithm-search-update-33768.html

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have questions.

    RankBot

    3 years, 3 months ago

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

The ticket ‘Sudden drop in search results’ is closed to new replies.