Checked Rank, I was at the Top. Little Later on it was Not

The Google two-step?

[pashley]

So I checked my Google ranking today, typing in my main keyword. Awesome, I'm the highest I've ever been, first page, 4th result (normally, bottom of the first page, or top of the second).

Just checked it now...page to the top of the 2nd page!

How can that be so dynamic?!

I didn't have alot of traffic these past couple of days to push it up...

Any ideas?

[davethekidca]

Congrats, I just fell from 2nd place to 9th. I figure I did something that ticked off google.:(

[alwaysthinking]

I believe it is Google experimenting with Big Daddy.

Conduct a search for "www.yourwebsite.com" in Google, then click on the "Find web pages from the site www.yourwebsite.com" otion OR (or just Google search "site:yourwebsite.com"); & note how many pages from your site that Google currently has indexed in their SERPs.

I have been noticing several different numbers of pages indexed, changing every few hours as Google continues it testing of Big Daddy. The number of pages from my site ranges from a high of 11,600 pages, to a low of 950 pages indexed, with serveral othert higher numbers in between, depending upon which "filter" Google is using in the Big Daddy algo change.

My guess is that the number of pages Google has indexed for your site is also fuxuating... which will also cause placement of some of your pages to change (or even disapear completely) depending upon which Big Daddy algo permutation Google is testing during a ceratin time frame.

[Haecceity]

Could be a foreshadowing of a new update. A few weeks back my site did something similar to yours -- jumped up and then back down again. And then one day it was back up and stayed there. So you may have been seeing test results from a new update that came online just briefly.

[rkhare]

for last few days even i am observing that i am on top pages of few more keywords and my position is continuing to change with every search. May be a temo flux before our new SERP's settle down.
anyway i am happy with the new developments, getting lot of new organic traffic.

[soapystar]

organic traffic

can you explain wot that means?

[Lyndsay]

pashley, that happens to me everyday... several times a day... I blame it on all the new updates and rollbacks

I feel your pain :)

[Thez]

Google doesn't show sites in the same order on every search. Sometimes a site with significantly lower PR than other sites in the same category appear in the top on some searches, but not as frequently as the high PR sites. This is how Google distributes traffic so that all sites get hits according to their PR.

This is just my observation though. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[pashley]

What kills me is that a guy with a fairly new blog on the same subject consistently stays a few rankings ahead of me - even though i add content several times a week, and he hasn't added any in a week or more.

WEIRD.

[rkhare]

organic traffic

can you explain wot that means?

organic traffic as found on [en.wikipedia.org...]

Organic traffic

Web traffic that comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as "Organic" traffic. Organic Traffic can be generated/increased by including the web site in Directories (p.e. Yahoo, DMOZ), Search Engines (p.e. Google, Inktomi), Guides (p.e. Yellow Pages, Restaurant Guides) and Award Sites.

In most cases the best way to increase web traffic is to register it with the major search engines. Just registering does not guarantee traffic, as search engines work by "crawling" registered web sites. These crawling programs (crawlers) are also known as "spiders" or "robots". Crawlers start at the registered home page, and usually follow the hyperlinks it finds, to get to pages inside the web site (internal links). Crawlers start gathering information about those pages and storing it and indexing it in the search engine database. In every case, they index the page URL and the page title. In most cases they also index the Web page header (meta tag) and a certain amount of the text of the page. Then, when a search engine user looks for a particular word or phrase, the search engine looks into the database and produces the results, usually sorted by relevance according to the search engine algorithms.

Usually, the top organic result gets most of the clicks from internet users. According to some studies the top result gets between 5% and 10% of the clicks. Each subsequent result gets between 30% and 60% of the clicks of the previous one. So it is definitely important to appear in the top results. There are some companies that specialize in search engine marketing. However, it is becoming common for webmasters to get approached by "boiler-room" companies with no real knowledge of how to get results. As opposed to Pay per Clicks, search engine marketing is usually paid monthly or yearly, and most search engine companies cannot promise specific results for what is paid to them.

Because of the huge amount of information available on the internet, crawlers might take days, weeks or months to complete review and index all the pages they find. Google, for example, as of the end of 2004 had indexed over 8 billion pages. Even having hundreds or thousands of servers working on the spidering of pages, a complete reindex takes its time. That is why some pages recently updated in certain web sites are not immediately found when doing searches on search engines.