Serp Fluxuations

I'm sure this question has been asked before, but please be patient with me, as I could not find an answer in the forum.

I have a site which I recently started doing some SEO on. The SEO includes both on-page, and a link campaign. I started about two weeks ago.

Last week, the site was not in the top 1,000 for the prefered term. Yesterday the site was at #18 in the G serps, and this morning has jumped to #65.

The site has been around for about a month (give or take a few days).

Does anyone know if the drop in ranking has to do with the Sandbox theory or the Google Dance theory?

Since the 6th of August my site has really dropped in google - My site has been up for over 2 years - over 3000 pages, alswyas gets indexed by google, new inbound and oubound links all the time, plus new content. My site now appears at least 30 places lower in the SERPS for all its searches.

As you can imagine I have been watching my keywords very closely for the last 2 weeks nearly - the major thing I have noticed and would liek someone to explain is this.

For all the keywords I search the results flucuate each time I search. for example I will search in teh morning for KW1 - position 32 - at luch its position 45 then in the afternoon its postion 38. Why is this happening?
Can anyone explain this? Does anyone else see this?

debateable - but the general agreement is that some filters have been applied to specific kw areas.

Since the 6th of August my site has really dropped in google - My site has been up for over 2 years - over 3000 pages, alswyas gets indexed by google, new inbound and oubound links all the time, plus new content. My site now appears at least 30 places lower in the SERPS for all its searches.

I've got a similar situation- 12,000+ page site, 5+ years old, top 5 for 3 years or so, no 30-40 places dropped across the board.

However (as I've said in a couple other threads) this has happened a couple times before, and it has always (in the past) straightened itself out in 6-8 weeks or so.

The fluctuations you are seeing is the result of being served results form different datacenters.

WebFusion,

I hope that the site does come back up soon - its been nearly 2 weeks - its killing me.

I have started to watch the datacenters and keeping a record of postions for KW1, I will keep you posted if these are moving.

I have been seeing fluctuations throughout the last two weeks.

Tried to post a topic about it here but never got past the mods..

I posted this yesterday, but only just got it added.

I am seeing some flux in the data centers as well - will keep posted on future flux

I see a lot of flax in SERPs for a very competitive keyword. Two sites at the top stay the same. Everything else changes daily. I've been watching this key phrase for the past 3 weeks. Sometimes the site that was No.4 goes down to a page 5, then comes back to the first page, some sites disappear completely, some climb up a notch or two. Constant change.
I wonder if there is some randomisation in the algo has been implemented recently - since approx mid July. Maybe Goo thinks, Ok if the sites are more less quite similar for a particular keyword why not shuffle the results a bit every day - they are all bit the same anyway....

atoff

>>I wonder if there is some randomisation in the algo has been implemented recently - since approx mid July. Maybe Goo thinks, Ok if the sites are more less quite similar for a particular keyword why not shuffle the results a bit every day - they are all bit the same anyway.... <<

What you have observed has been going on for months, and which I call "Rotating Algos". I wrote several posts about the same here [google.com]

Enjoy ;-)

[edited by: Woz at 9:50 am (utc) on Sep. 5, 2005]
[edit reason] Fixed Scrollism [/edit]

Yep, but there is something different this week though.
My competitor has been on 1st page for over 1 year, today he is completly gone for the first time!

I've seen quite a bit of "jumping about" this week. methinks another major update is pending.

I could go for a big shakeup - makes life interesting.

The most competitive term I care about was finally looking very clean after a couple of years of garbage on Google since Florida.

Around 21 July 2005 the SERPs began to make sense -- real sites started showing up. By 25 July 2005 the results were spectacular and improving.

Suddenly, around 13 August 2005 the fresh tags went away for those SERPs. Real sites began to vanish or drop in the results.

There have been no fresh tags and no cache updates in those pages from 13 August 2005 until today and as of right now, there are still no fresh tags and pages are showing which have been modified but not updated by googlebot.

A title change on one page which was made on 15 June 2005 is not reflected in the SERPs.

It seems peculiar for Google to revert to very old versions of pages and then freeze the results for weeks at a time considering that they care about freshness.

It is beginning to look like Inktomi spam.

Suddenly, around 13 August 2005 the fresh tags went away for those SERPs. Real sites began to vanish or drop in the results.

There have been no fresh tags and no cache updates in those pages from 13 August 2005 until today and as of right now, there are still no fresh tags and pages are showing which have been modified but not updated by googlebot.

Excellent observation quotations. I'm in the same boat-- after stable SERPs for nearly 6 months, I experienced a drop for the majority of my terms.

The Google cache for my site is showing a cache date of August 12th, while all of my competitors have a cache date of August 20th. What is going on here? Any guesses as to when the cache will be updated and what is happening?

Thanks.

Hey guys,

I am in the same situation, the traffic is going down. Has been extremely worse in the past 2 weeks. Do you know when these fulctuations may stabilize? Tomorrow Monday? or in Sept?

Thanks

>you know when these fluctuations may stabilize?

It does not look good from where I sit.

It looks like manual manipulation. They deny they do manual SERP manipulation but when you file a trademark infringement complaint things sure get fixed quickly and mysteriously.

Get your dancing shoes on. Here we go again...

Trying to find something positive in the current gosh-isn't-blog-spam-cool flux is like a needle in a haystack.

It used to be when Google did planned updates that the results were good overall, with many sites lost temporarily as a downside. These days the planned updates do nothing but add garbage to the results, which then are culled out during the normal everflux process.

That's a good summation, steveb. As I see it, the major updates install the new dials, and then in the days and weeks that follow, Google twiddles those dials along with their older controls.

>> I've seen quite a bit of "jumping about" this week. methinks another major update is pending.

I predict first week of september

walkman

>>I predict first week of september<<

Friday 26th August 2005 is the date ;-)

I hope it soon.

I have seena drop in my SERPS by some 30 places in the last 3 weeks, but over the weekend most of my searches are dropping past the 100 mark - not good.

Roll on Friday!

Well

Exactly the same here - it looks like my site is dropping heavily. So far I lost around 30% of my Google traffic. Cross checked with some of my competitors - and their sites seem to be stable...

Not the very best Week i will assume...

itloc

The big changes will occur over the upcoming Labor Day weekend. You heard it here first.

I handle around 1,500 keywords where I work and we have been seeing heavy changes in our kw placements over the weekend, generally on the negative side. Seems like were not the only one.

Folks!

Take a look at these two DCs which have already started showing fundamental changes now for my testing keyphrases.

64.233.187.99

64.233.187.104

Do you like what you see ;-)

I like those SERPS very much (selfish point of view) - but they do look like some SERPS I saw just before the last update. Those ones were mainly Supplemental Pages and not good results - as if they were tired SERPS where most of the good pages had dropped out. The 'Refresh' came about 5 days later.

[edited by: Iguana at 3:19 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2005]

reseller, those two DCs are showing that a (presumed) duplicate content penalty imposed on one of my sites in Feb is now lifted. So, yes, it looks like some new results. :)

But I'm still seeing hijackers of my pages topping me in SERPS :(
(I don't believe that high PR gets around this as proposed by Google. My PR is much higher than any of the hijackers. If these new results are the best they can do they have certainly not solved the 302 issues)

[edited by: oddsod at 3:28 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2005]

Guys I see huge drop over past few weeks as well.

Now when things stabilize, will our site generally go up? Or if it dropped it dropped.

Can we hope for the better?

I hope that these are not these Serps - I have really dropped out. This is odd though as one of my otehr sites (not related) is still doing fine, no change at all.