tedster - 9:44 pm on Jan 15, 2006 (gmt 0)

One thing this issue should highlight for site developers is keeping a log of significant changes you make.

If you see a drastic shift in your ranking, you should have a quick reference at hand to see what things you did recently. I would confine this particular log to major changes - acquired a couple new backlinks? No biggie. Doubled your backlinks in one week? Record that. Log ANY change to your htaccess, mod_rewrite or parallel changes on IIS.

I always suggest looking at changes that YOU'VE made on the site itself before looking for an issue at Google. Yes, sometimes there is a significant shift in the ranking algo and you might be able to respond in some way once you get a clue about what's going on at Google. But if you lost rank and the SERP did not change much in general, then always start at home, where you are most in charge.