traffik_daddy - 3:39 pm on Mar 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Something very odd just happened. I searched for my top keyword term. We have been at #3 since Panda, previously #1. My listing had disappeared completely, nowhere down to page 10 (in 10s). I did the same search on a different browser with no history on it, same result. Other terms were where I expected them. Then 2 minutes later I'm back at #3. What's going on? Sid (In UK)

Hi Sid, I am in the UK and I've seen this a few times too. I run a ranking tool on a VPS (I know, against Google TOS) on a slow schedule and every now and then a keyword will completely disappear from a clients campaign, and then come back moments later, or a day later, the time varies, but they always come back.

At first I thought it was a bug in the software and it just missed the url, but further evidence after a manual check suggests that keywords do disappear from Google completely and come back again at selected time intervals, a few minutes, a few hours, and up to 24 hours. One or two (very rarely) dont come back for a while, but I assume that is down the the backlinks not being strong enough, but to see it within minutes is hard to work out why it happens.

I am having some stranger readings at the moment, see my other thread, some very strange reports that I just cannot understand the how? and why?.