Keyword Phrases penalized?

I have no idea what happened :(

[Jennysmom]

My top 3 keyword phrases(very competative) were #13, #21, and #35, for months, then a few days ago they dropped off the charts! I didn't make any major changes, I do not use hidden text, or spam, or other google no-nos, and the site is still indexed with a PR of 4.

Anyone have any idea what could have happened here?

[Brett_Tabke]

What did your other 100-200 top phrases do?

[Jennysmom]

Brett: I only had the 3 top ones. I'm getting about 20 or so hits from others... "blue green large widgets" for example, but have lost over 500 hits a day from the top 3. It may not seem a lot but, it is a lot to me.

I am asking here because you guys seem to know so much and seem so intune to google. I just can't figure out what I did wrong...

[storevalley]

I just can't figure out what I did wrong

Two thoughts ...

1. If you haven't made any changes but your competition has, this could have made the difference.

2. Pages often drop out of the Google index totally, then reappear a while (1-3 days) later.

[drewls]

Does your site reappear in the serps after you refresh the google search page? That's been happening to us and has been losing us an enormous amount of traffic.

It seems Google is still suffering from the 'lost index' syndrome.

[DaveN]

jenny is your homepage still ranking in G.

search of the URL and see what 2 pages G returns if one isn't the homepage then thats your problem

DaveN

[Umbra]

The exact same phenomena has struck my website. Our index page does appear in Google's index, but does not rank for anything, even for very specific phrases that should bring up our site. Rather, sub pages may appear instead but they rank poorly. I noticed this in www2 and www3 last but did not pay attention to it before.

[amazed]

they might reappear - my keywords seem to be in constant flux