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Editor: Matt Paines

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Is it possible, Google Analytics can damage your ranking?

How would you feel if you found that your analytics package was the prime suspect to your rankings in Google evaporating? Don’t get too excited, we’re not suggesting Google Analytics (GA) is the cause of all your problems. However under certain circumstances it may cause a loss in rankings.

Recently a client who had been enjoying a number 1 for his chosen search term found, very abruptly one Monday morning, that his ranking had slumped 14 places. More worrying was the fact that his home page no longer had a cache in Google.

Usually this kind of symptom is down to some kind of duplication, so the first thing to do was to check for any signs that pages had been cloned some how. After exploring extensively there was nothing obvious.

In conversation with the client, they had been working on a new beta site (on a test server) which was effectively a duplicate of the original but with different visuals and branding. It became clear that the Friday before the slump the GA code had been placed in it.

Could it be that even though the beta was on a public test server, by putting the GA code in it, this was enough for it to register with Google? It certainly looks like it, we instructed the client to remove the code. The very next day their ranking returned!!!!

In the normal scheme of things most users of Google Analytics, when using a single account, will not have duplicate sites. Obviously, the issue arises with betas and more importantly sites that exist for different geographical market sectors. I think it appropriate to say anyone with a similar problem may want to check how they manage their GA account and code.

Any webmaster or SEO should consider this when analysing sudden unexplained negative changes in ranking.

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Comments

28 Nov 07 Dixon Jones I think there are many ways Google can access a beta site thout inbound links. It could be via someone viewing the site with a google toolbar on the browser, for instance.

28 Nov 07 Matt says - Thanks Dixon, a point well made. Ordinarily I might agree with you, however the rankings have returned for the client. The only thing that has changed is the Google Analytics code has been removed.

29 Nov 07 Kristjan Mar Hauksson This might a problem, but from where I stand the only things that might contribute to that problem with tools like Google Analytics is: 
1. That the code is placed before any real text happens (just under the and by that taking valuable text space. 
2. And/or the code is placed before any real text happens (just under the and the 0pix image stops the site from loading by stalling. I would imagine that the spiders/crawlers do have JavaScript disabled so this might contribute. (Google does not use 0 pix image) 
3. Even if placed just over the this might also pose a problem, though less likely 
4. Again the code itself or communications with the JS file might also pose a problem, though very unlikely. 
It's all about access, is it not? Another scenario is that the cookie or the "harassment" that the search engine spider get's hit by the analytics tool when visiting a site might be a violation to some "spam" detection and therefore flagging the site for some kind of penalisation and on this case lowering the the Page Rank. Google is a huge company and the left hand might not know what the right hand is doing?

4 Dec 07 Beth  Thanks Matt, I think we might have suffered from this. Three months ago we were building a beta site with our developers. It had Google Analytics on it, we even sacked our SEO guys because of our rankings on the live site were dropping so fast. When the new site went live the rankings came back, we thought it was the new SEO we'd appointed. But maybe not!

5 Dec 07 Troy  think you've got something here, I've had a similar problem. I've taken the analytics code off the test site- we'll see if the main site comes back in the next couple of days. Hope this works, Thanks

5 Dec 07 Zantonina This is certainly not an isolated problem - there is a thread on WebMaster World thats worth a read. http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3248965.htm

10 Dec 07 Troy  It worked! my rankings are back, I would never have found this myself - thanks Matt

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