Several years at #1 - today #2

Does dynamic content on the home page hurt?

[webpro00801]

After several years at the #1 spot for a very broad geographic term (travel site), this morning I find that the long time #2 and I have switched spots. A couple of months back I did some house cleaning on the home page and it now has a lot less text (their page has tons of text). I also have a different set of hotel specials showing from a script the randomly picks an include file (about once a minute). Do you think any of those could be contributing factors?

Any thoughts on the difference between being #1 and #2?

[Kufu]

Depending on what your PR is the change in text could be the culprit. You mentioned that the competition has a lot more text compared to yours, so that could easily be the reason. As far as the dynamic content goes, that shouldn't cause a problem.

[randle]

Any thoughts on the difference between being #1 and #2?

On page factors could be it, but there has been a lot of very subtle changes lately from the algorithm side of things; could be that as well. If you made the changes two months ago, and your site is getting cached on a regular basis, I would wait a while before doing anything. You might wake up tomorrow and all is right in the world.

[webpro00801]

Interesting - for a moment we were back to #1 today and now back to #2 again. Right now we are also not showing last visited dates - which is strange.
On BigDaddy we are still #1. I don't know - not time to panic but still doesn't feel good...

[CainIV]

I wouldn't touch a thing yet, especially in this time of flux as randle said.

If it turns out that long term your rank begins to drop, then begin putting together your observations of your site and your competitors site.

Changing things on the fly when things aren't going as well as one hopes often lead to more drastic problems.