Sudden Drop with Keyword Search

Hello. This is my first thread in the MSN section. I've been keeping track of our placement with the keyword "web hosting" in Google, Yahoo and MSN. I've noticed just a couple of days ago, I cannot find our site (hostway.com) anywhere with the keyword. Our position used to fluctuate from 4 to 10, sometimes even going to the second page. This just seem so unnatural for us to disappear.

Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

Edited: I wanted to change the title because I didn't want anyone to think that our site is banned.

Try this free tool: http://www.freewebsubmission.com/site-ranking.html. It may help you figure out where you are.

Flustuations are normal on msn and all you can do is tweak a bit and try and recover come ground.

I totally understand that our position will change daily. What really got me worried is that our site were on page 1 and 2 for a very long time and, suddenly, nowhere to be found.

One thing that I always remember from when I was first learning SEO is this: When you start dropping and wondering why, you have to ask yourself "What have I done lately to keep my sites high in the SERPS, and what has my competition done?"

SEO is always changing, the SERPs are always changing, and getting top placement is only about 20% of the battle - keeping it is the hard part!

I agree Young. I am fairly new to SEO, but I'm enjoying the challenge. Even if I'm experiencing more "Oh crap!" moments. I try to keep our site fresh or at least improve something in the site, even if it is minor cleaning up the code of a page.

Just an update, our site is back in MSN

I've experienced the same situation with MSN. I consistently rank well for my keywords, but every once in awhile I completely disapper from the results. I just wait it out, making very few changes at all if any, and my site is usually restored to the top of the listings in a couple days. This has happened to me twice in the last couple of weeks.

I am sure glad I have found this discussion. This is my EXACT concern at this point in time with my site. Well, all I can say is, SAME HERE. For the longest time I have been on the first page of MSN with my targeted key word phrase, usually fluctuating between position 5 and position 9, but always on the first page. As of the 22nd of February, I dropped to the top of the fifth page.

Being on the first page of MSN for a while, and since I am still working on getting higher positioning on Google, most of my Internet leads have come from MSN, and now, since this drop, hardly any at all. It has really upset me that I dropped like this, and concerns me. I have done NOTHING but improve my link popularity on a consistent basis, and I really don't see why the sudden big drop.

However, just as of yesterday, I moved up to the fourth page, from being on the fifth. I hope that this is a sign that I will be moving back up soon. I hope everyone is right in this discussion to just wait it out and watch my site get back to the first page again, because this can be really nerve racking. If anyone has any feedback on my situation, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Ralph
FloridaLifeandHealth.com

The company I work for is a web hosting company so obviously web hosting is the main keyword I have tried to get results for since working here.

We are usually on page 1 of msn.co.uk and page 2 on uk yahoo & Ireland for web hosting (and this has taken some time to achieve) yet recently the msn result has fluctuated wildly from page 1 to page 3.

I have not done anything recently, which might have resulted in these changes.

I put this down to the vast amount of competition we have for this this keyword (574,000,000 results on yahoo.com) and the fact that a lot of the web hosting companies now spend money on SEO. If you sit still for just a few weeks, the competition will overtake you.