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Ranking tanked #1 to gone within an hour – homepage only, everything else untouched
Posted by on February 16, 2026 at 1:58 amHomepage was #1 for competitive utility keywords until 1 AM last night. Within an hour, gone. Not demoted, completely removed. Can't find it past page 20. Still indexed though.
The weird part:
- Branded terms still ranking fine
- Broad keywords I ranked #7-8 for — untouched
- Every other page on my site still #1 for their keywords
- Homepage hit its all-time highest traffic just 2 days ago
- Made zero changes
Google crawled my homepage right before the drop.
My main competitor also briefly disappeared from the same keywords ~8 hours later, then came back at #1 in my spot.
Site is 10 months old, no manual actions, survived December core update fine. This wasn't gradual, it was instant like a switch.
Has anyone seen this pattern before? Homepage filtered from specific keywords while the rest of the site is completely untouched?
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1 Reply
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Likely a temporary SERP test or algorithm refresh.
Check technical basics, but wait and monitor before changing anything. -
it’s temporary query-level reprocessing; it sounds like Google reshuffled that specific keyword cluster.
Sometimes when Google crawls a page right before a drop, it’s re-evaluating intent alignment. For competitive utility terms, especially on a 10-month-old site, Google may test different results for a few days.
check these points
– keyword cannibalization test (if other pages for those keywords are ranking)– if SERP intent shifted or not
things generally resolve in 3–14 days once Google finishes recalibrating
also, do a quick AI-based content + keyword gap analysis to see if Google may have reassigned intent
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