The massive online marketplace dropped in Google’s search results this week, which is odd, considering just how big the company is. While it was originally thought that it had everything to do with the new Google algorithm update rolled out by the Internet giant, it looks like there’s more to the story.
According to Search Engine Land, Google hit eBay with a manual penalty, which means that someone over at Google considered that eBay needed the slap and personally downranked the site. While it’s true that Panda 4.0 could be to blame as well, chances are that it was a combination of the two.
The timing of the ranking troubles for eBay coincides with the data breach that put in danger over 145 million users, as their names, email addresses, and other personal information were stolen, including passwords, although these ones are believed to be safe thanks to the added layers of encryption applied to them.
Banking information, as well as credit card details, is safe, according to the company.
In the aftermath of the Panda 4.0 rollout, it looks like eBay lost visibility on keywords that began with “www.ebay.com/bhp” in the URL. Out of over 120,000 eBay pages that have lost rating points, those with BHP in the URL account for about 90,000.
