Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Significant "Average Position" dips in Search Console each time I post on Google My Business
-
Hi everyone,
Several weeks ago I noticed that each Wednesday my site's Average Position in Search Console dipped significantly.
Immediately I identified that this was the day my colleague published and back-linked a blog post, and so we spent the next few weeks testing and monitoring everything we did.
We discovered that it was ONLY when we created a Google My Business post that the Average Position dipped, and on the 1st July we tested it one more time. The results were the same (please see attached image).
I am 100% confident that Google My Business is the cause of the issue, but can't identify why. The image I upload belongs to me, the text isn't spammy or stuffed with keywords, the Learn More links to my own website, and I never receive any warnings from Google about the content.
I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this and how I can stop the issue from continuing. I should note, that my Google My Business insights are generally positive i.e. no dips in search results etc.
My URL is https://www.photographybymatthewjames.com/
Thanks in advance
Matthew
-
No worries, you often get the weekly dips when global - no idea why. However, when adding country it all flattens out. If the question is answered or happy please mark it accordingly. Hope that helps.
-
Actually, no. Those big dips each Wednesday don't appear when I select Denmark. So I guess this makes much more sense if I am only targetting a local market such as Denmark.
Thanks for making this clear...
-
Ta, but do you get the big dip now when Denmark is applied?
-
Thanks again.
No, the country filter wasn't set, so it was showing an average position for all countries.
The site is optimised as best as possible as far as I am aware.
-
Apologies my question was unclear - when you extracted your position data from search console. Did you limit it to Denmark? There is navigation that lets you limit to the country. Can you let me know if we are working from that data set on positional changes?
Zero or 0 is worse than 196. 0 means your not ranking at all, whereas 196 means that is where you are ranking position 196.
They are very low rankings, is the site optimised from a title tag, meta description, H1 perspective?
Check out the URL structure component,
https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/on-page-factors
Also see excerpt below:
An Ideally Optimized Web Page
An ideal web page should do all of the following:
- Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
- Include subject in title tag
- Include subject in URL
- Include subject in image alt text
- Specify subject several times throughout text content
- Provide unique content about a given subject
- Link back to its category page
- Link back to its subcategory page (If applicable)
- Link back to its homepage (normally accomplished with an image link showing the website logo on the top left of a page)
Hope that helps.
- Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
-
Hi, and thanks for the fast response.
Yes, I have specifically been targetting Denmark for the past 3-4 years (I set this up in the old Webmaster Tools and it still appears the same). So in short, I am targetting one country.
As for Queries – yes, there are significant drops for certain customer queries. The column on the left with the highest number shows the average page rank on the day I posted on Google My Business, vs. the day before I posted. i.e. event photographer dipped from 0 average page ranking to 196
Does this make things clearer in any way?
| event photographer | 196 | 0 | 196 |
| event photography | 193 | 0 | 193 |
| sports photographer | 188.3 | 0 | 188.3 |
| sports photography | 182 | 0 | 182 |
| james harrison | 101 | 0 | 101 |
| photoshoot københavn | 98 | 0 | 98 |
| copenhagen photos | 97 | 0 | 97 |
| danish courses in copenhagen | 96 | 0 | 96 |
| dhl stafet københavn | 92 | 0 | 92 |
| cph business | 91.5 | 0 | 91.5 | -
Hi
On search console - have you limited that to a country? Or is that "countryless"". As if countryless - not unusal.
Can you clarify? Ideally, limit to the country you are targetting.
Also on top of the overall position dips - is there any corresponding dips for major customer queries you are tracking?
Regards
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages? Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time? Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Fisher0 -
How does google know if rich snippet reviews are fake?
According to: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/rich-snippets/reviews - all someone has to do is add in some html code and write the review. How does google do any validation on whether these reviews are legitimate or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wlingke0 -
How do you change the 6 links under your website in Google?
Hello everyone, I have no idea how to ask this question, so I'm going to give it a shot and hopefully someone can help me!! My company is called Eteach, so when you type in Eteach into Google, we come in the top position (phew!) but there are 6 links that appear underneath it (I've added a picture to show what I mean). How do you change these links?? I don't even know what to call them, so if there is a particular name for these then please let me know! They seem to be an organic rank rather than PPC...but if I'm wrong then do correct me! Thanks! zorIsxH.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eteach_Marketing0 -
Does Google crawl and index dynamic pages?
I've linked a category page(static) to my homepage and linked a product page (dynamic page) to the category page. I tried to crawl my website using my homepage URL with the help of Screamingfrog while using Google Bot 2.1 as the user agent. Based on the results, it can crawl the product page which is a dynamic. Here's a sample product page which is a dynamic page(we're using product IDs instead of keyword-rich URLs for consistency):http://domain.com/AB1234567 Here's a sample category page: http://domain.com/city/area Here's my full question, does the spider result (from Screamingfrog) means Google will properly crawl and index the property pages though they are dynamic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Avoiding the "sorry we have no imagery here" G-maps error
Hi there, we recently did a redesign on a big site and added Gmaps locations to almost every page since we are related to Real State, Listings, Details, search results all have a map embedded. While looking at GWT I found that the top keywords on our site (which is in spanish) are the following. have here imagery sorry After a quick search I found out this is a Gmaps bug, when Google Bot accesses the Pages it throws an error out with this text repeated several times. If you do a search for "sorry we have no imagery here" you will see lots of sites with this issue. My question is, Is this affecting the overall SEO since Bots are actually crawling and indexing this hence its being reported by GWT, Should I cloak this to robots? Has anyone noticed this or has been able to fix it? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | makote0 -
Can one business operate under more than one website?
Is it possible for a business to rank organically for the same keyword multiple times with different web addresses? Say if I sell car keys and I wanted to rank for "buy new car keys" and I set up two different website say ibuycarkeys.com and carkeycity.com and then operate under both of these, would Google frown upon this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | steve2150 -
Google places VS position one ranking above the places.
Hi Guys, Will creating a new Google places listing for a business have any effect their current position one spot for their major geo location keyword? I.e restaurants perth - say they are ranking no 1 above all the places listings if they set up a places listing would they lose that position and merge with all the other places accounts? Or would they have that listing as well as the places listing? I have been advised it could be detrimental to set up the places account if this is the case does anyone know any ways around this issue as the business really needs a places page for google maps etc. Appreciate some guidance Thanks. BC
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bodie0