Ranking Dropped from Letter C to the 3rd Page - WHY?

[Google Forum Bot]

I have checked my ranking every day since starting my company website for the search "morro bay real estate", and I was so excited when we reached letter C placement on Google Maps for that search a couple of weeks ago. However, as of this week my site has been moved to the 2nd or 3rd page. What caused this and how to I get me placement back and keep that from happening in the future? Any advice is appreciated. Also, I have noticed that Google has recently been asking me questions like, "which of these listings is more relevant for your search" and it will have my business and a couple of others. I was wondering if that is a possible reason or even if a competitor has said that I was "permanently closed" for example. This is a small town and competition is pretty fierce.

Thank you,
Aaron

www. rockviewrealty .com
551 Embarcadero, Suite A
Morro Bay, CA
93442

Read the rest at the Google and your Business Forum...

Feel free to weigh in below.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I moved this out to main discussion forum because treebles and I gave some good and comprehensive advice.

AND this is a problem we are seeing a lot lately. Where it appears a listing drops out of search and starts over in the local database.

Here is the advice I gave: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/N80kq2kotR0/g2Kdy4cZdJIJ

It looks to me like somehow your listing may have started over in the local database. Symptom I'm seeing are that your SITE still ranks on page one in organic - you just dropped out of blended. Plus there is no Map Maker history and the "Similar Places" section is missing at bottom of your listing. This happens sometimes when Google, for whatever reason, starts a new listing for you - it can take up to 6 weeks before it works back into the local database and starts ranking again.

BUT in case it's not that OR while waiting to work back into the local database, there are a few minor problems with your listing that could possibly trip a filter or cause a ranking penalty. So I would work on fixing your listing in the following ways. Starting top down.

1) I don't think Google likes images that are ads with text and phone #s. I would change those to just maybe one logo image and the rest just pretty property pics with no text.

2) Categories: "Real Estate Agency, Property Management Company, Real Estate Company, Real Estate Office"

Google hates repetition and repeating Real Estate over and over in cats is considered spam. Pick the best default category Google gives you in the dashboard. Then it's fine to make up custom cats BUT they must comply with the guidelines and should not be just different ways to say the same thing. For example Real Estate Agency + Property Management Company are fine because they are 2 different categories and a company COULD be one or the other or both.

3) Description: "Rock View Realty is a full-service real estate brokerage located on the Embarcadero in beautiful Morro Bay. We specialize in representing buyers and sellers of residential property all over Californi"

Do not repeat name, Embarcadero (which is also in your street address) and especially don't repeat city. It can cause a ranking drop.

So if by chance you are being penalized for any of those things, I've seen listing pop right back up, once I advised cleaning the listing up. However I still think the main issue is that for some reason this listing started over in the ranking cycle.

Click link above to read treebles' advice too.

Any questions or comments???

 

[WineCountryCarpetCleaning]

Weird problem, like the advice you gave very much. Definitely the cats were spammy, that was solid advice

This company is in one of my towns, tiny little beach town of about 10k people.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Weird problem

Actually not a weird problem which is why I wanted to move it out for discussion. Myself and other TCs have been seeing this problem more and more.

A mature listing that WAS ranking suddenly drops, can't be found, acts like it was deleted and recreated and is starting over just like a new listing.

Several of us have asked Google why this is happening so much lately. They've never really given an answer.

I have a very strong suspicion and am pretty sure I'm right because it happened on a client worked on so I had access to the before CID, before MM record and dashboard, so could see everything that happened and track the problem back to it's roots. In a nutshell I think it happens when Googler or bot does a backwards merge due to a duplicate listing.