The consequences of negative user-signals on Google's rankings - SISTRIX Login Free trialSISTRIX BlogFree ToolsAsk SISTRIXTutorialsWorkshopsAcademy Home / Ask SISTRIX / Crawling and indexing / The consequences of negative user-signals on Google’ s rankings

The consequences of negative user-signals on Google’ s rankings

From: SISTRIX Team 22.02.2022 Google-Index, Google-Bot and the Crawling Process What is the Google Everflux? Robots meta tag vs. robots.txt: what are the main differences? What is an HTTP referrer? Our web site is no longer in the index - have we lost our rankings? What is a User-Agent? What is Google Search Console and How To Get Started Web Crawlers: How do They Work? Changing Google Search through Entities What is the X-Robots-Tag? What is the Mobile First Index? Rich Snippets: What are the advantages? Can the Google-Bot fill out and crawl forms? Crawl Budget: What does this mean? These are the CTR's For Various Types of Google Search Result Crawling and Indexing for extensive websites Google SERP Features: Result Types in the Search Results Why does the amount of indexed pages fluctuate so much? How can I quickly get a new page into Google's index? Why does a blocked, noindex URL show up in the search results? Is a website with and without the www harmful? Shelf space optimisation on Google Find out how many pages of a domain are indexed by Google The consequences of negative user-signals on Google's rankings Why am I getting different values for indexed pages in the Google search, the GSC and SISTRIX? How can I remove a URL on my website from the Google Index? Back to overviewThe homepage of the German domain hotel-bonn.de offers a great example for how much influence user signals can have on Google’s rankings for a specific keyword. The domain is an old exact-match domain for the keyword “hotel bonn” and the two words “hotel” and “Bonn” (the former German capital) also appear on the homepage and are included in some external backlinks. For Google, these are distinct ranking signals that the website hotel-bonn.de should have a decently prominent ranking position for the keyword “hotel bonn”. When we take a look at the ranking development for the domain and keyword, we see a constant up and down in the rankings. Ranking history for the domain hotel-bonn.de and the keyword “hotel bonn”At certain times, the domain can be found in the top 10 for a few weeks and then it will disappear again from the first search result page, for quite a while. Sometimes, the domain even managed to climb to position 2 for the attractive and competitive search phrase “hotel bonn”. The problem with this website is that it is not about a hotel in the beautiful former federal capital of Bonn, as the name would suggest, but it belongs to a hotel in the German city of Kassel, more than 250 kilometers away. The hotel belongs to a family with the surname Bonn and is therefore called “Landgasthaus Hotel Bonn” (Country Inn Hotel Bonn). Most of Google’s users searching for “hotel bonn” are likely looking for a hotel in the city of Bonn (User Intent). A hotel that is a 2.5 hour drive away from Bonn is likely not exactly what most users would consider a satisfactory result. Many users will likely have read the snippet, “hotel and country inn at the outskirts of Kassel”, and refrained from clicking the result, but others will click on it and return to Google shortly thereafter to click on a different result (high Return-to-SERP-Rate). This will happen at a much higher rate as for the other results on the first page. Thanks to this, we can watch Google’s algorithm at work. Due to the positive ranking signals, Google will test hotel-bonn.de on the first results page for the keyword “hotel bonn, every couple of months. And the users will dissaprove of the result through their search behavior, which will promt Google to remove the result from the first page, again. This becomes very apparent when we look at the highly unstable Visibility Index history for hotel-bonn.de. Visibility Index history for hotel-bonn.deThanks to the simplicity of this example, we get a beautiful view into the problems that can arise for both Google and webmasters when ranking signals and user-intent do not match up. So remember, strong fluctuations in the Visibility may be a sign that your website is simply sending the wrong signals to Google. From: SISTRIX Team 22.02.2022 Google-Index, Google-Bot and the Crawling Process What is the Google Everflux? Robots meta tag vs. robots.txt: what are the main differences? What is an HTTP referrer? Our web site is no longer in the index - have we lost our rankings? What is a User-Agent? What is Google Search Console and How To Get Started Web Crawlers: How do They Work? Changing Google Search through Entities What is the X-Robots-Tag? What is the Mobile First Index? Rich Snippets: What are the advantages? Can the Google-Bot fill out and crawl forms? Crawl Budget: What does this mean? These are the CTR's For Various Types of Google Search Result Crawling and Indexing for extensive websites Google SERP Features: Result Types in the Search Results Why does the amount of indexed pages fluctuate so much? How can I quickly get a new page into Google's index? Why does a blocked, noindex URL show up in the search results? Is a website with and without the www harmful? Shelf space optimisation on Google Find out how many pages of a domain are indexed by Google The consequences of negative user-signals on Google's rankings Why am I getting different values for indexed pages in the Google search, the GSC and SISTRIX? How can I remove a URL on my website from the Google Index? Back to overview German English Spanish Italian French