Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
It spends two weeks on the first page (ranked 1-10) of results and then one week on the tenth page (ranked 90-100). That's fine if there was a big datacenter update, a backlink update or something currently underway but this has been going on for months!
Either my site is good or my site is bad, how on earth can Google be this indecisive for this long? It's really frustrating because now we can see it coming, I got up this morning knowing that Google will have flushed us and I won't get back my first page rankings till this weekend.
If you rely upon free search engine listings, you will naturally find results erratic. I should conecntrate more on web site revenue levels than search engine placement.
Matt
I should conecntrate more on web site revenue levels than search engine placement.
Ummm ... I don't want to be rude just in case you do actually have some sort of mental issues so let's just clarify your statement first: I start a topic in the Google Search forum about problems I'm having with a site bouncing up and down on the Google search engine and your advice is to "not concentrate on search engine placement". Have I got that right?
with many other webmasters that are in the same boat
Okay. So this isn't personal then. This is happening to loads of other sites too? It's just that I hadn't seen any other threads with that topic i.e. "Google server/database updates now taking six months to finish instead of six days."
Normally this kind of fluxuation was only seen during the week of a big update.
We've been moving somewhat as well...but the frustrating thing is when the top 5 or 6 sites for our keywords NEVER move
Yes, that's exactly what I'm seeing. It's only me and two other sites that seem to fall off for that week. I can't see any real difference between me and the sites that seem to ride it out. We both have comparible sites with comparible size with comparible backlinks and comparible age and comparible freshness and so on and so on. There doesn't seem to be anything remarkable between us yet I drop to No. 86 today and they stay in the top 10. But I can guarantee you that I'll be back up in the top 10 by this weekend if Google continues as it has done this year.
I suffer similiar results and have wild placements each week, while other sites remain rock steady in their numbered position...
check out the age of the other sites that maybe one reason your seeing other sites being a little bit more stable
already thought of that, which is why I included:
and comparible age ...
in my list.
I for one would be interested in knowing where the general age = stability consensus is?
Although I am an avid disputer of the Sandbox Theory (i.e. all new sites are penalised based on age) it is perfectly clear that age (i.e. the day the site was first registered) does play a part in ranking. And quite rightly so really. A company with Est. 1830 is "generally" more reputable than a new marketing offshoot of a large corporation.
it is thought that the older a site is the more stable it is
Anyone have any clue as to the point of all this?
Either my site is good or my site is bad, how on earth can Google be this indecisive for this long?
Actually, for just about any search, you would be fluctuating between "exceptional" and "great". If your chosen search term produces 1,000,000 results and you are #100 that would put you in the top 0.01 percentile.
When a page really bounces around, I usually consider it to be a problem of robustness.
If there are hundreds of factors involved in ranking, and different the weighting is changed even slightly, a site that is depending too much on just a few factors can suffer significant moves in the SERPs. A robust page will rate well in many of those factors, so it will be less susceptable to those fluctuuations.
An example of this might be how important google considers on-site and off-site anchor text. If you have really good internal navigation, but few external links to your page, and google turns the knob for internal anchor text down a little, your rankings for that page could drop precipitously. If you have a good combination of internal and external links, that page would be much more stable.
Now apply that to all the factors, not just the factor dujour that people declare here on WW.
and google turns the knob
But that's my point. It seems like they're turning the exact same knob up then down once a week and have been doing for weeks on end.
Surely if they were making a change or testing some new algorithm shift it would be over by now?
;)
But that's my point. It seems like they're turning the exact same knob up then down once a week and have been doing for weeks on end.
I don't think there are any knobs. What we're seeing is the movement of data between resources and that data being recalculated. There's a lot of stuff going on when dealing with 8 billion pages. I don't know personally but I can only guess at the sheer volume of data that is being processed by the second.
Google is finally moving to a randomization of the index. Something I've been predicting for the past two years. ;)
It could also be some covert operation. You know, mess with the index then sit back and wait. Watch as all those chasing the algo start tweaking, etc. Detect the patterns. Bring the index back to snuff but filter those who were frantically making changes trying to keep up with the algo. That type of activity should really shave a few years off the ole' life expectancy of an algo chaser. ;)
I now started to look on wikipedia first for general knowledge terms.
I don't want to be rude just in case you do actually have some sort of mental issues...
I think that is the funniest thing I have ever read in a forum.
Right now, their are basically two data sets, the good results that are on about 9 data centers, and the bad results which are on the rest.
If you use a tool such as mcdar and read the datacenter watch thread, you will make a lot more sense out of your results.
The days of randomly checking your results on the default datacenter is long over.
I am new at this... how to I check out the age of a site?
Do a search for way back machine in google and you can see archived websites.
Bek.
not a particularily enjoyable ride most of the time.
-R
Its not that your rank is bouncing around, its that you are hitting a different datacenter every time you check your rankings.
Right now, their are basically two data sets, the good results that are on about 9 data centers, and the bad results which are on the rest.If you use a tool such as mcdar and read the datacenter watch thread, you will make a lot more sense out of your results.
The days of randomly checking your results on the default datacenter is long over.
Exactly
Our rankings seem to have taken on nocturnal habits. At night (when most of our customers are fast asleep) they are ranking nice and high ..but come daylight they are back to the deepest depths of google's datacentres
This is exactly what happened to our sites after the Florida update; usually on a Sunday too. Come Monday morning, they'd disappeared into the bowels of Google's index.
Now, the pathetically small number of pages left in the Google index is up and down more times than a disreputable lady's underwear ;)
I have one site that is doing exactly the same thing. The only thing that is consistent is that the site appears on page one (position 8 or so) for a few days then disappears for a few days...it is a cyclical thing.
A few notes to those offering explanations:
1. The site in question has had NO changes
2. This happens using the EXACT SAME keywords
3. It happens in all datacenters (or at least all that I can check).
4. The category/industry this is in has had little or no changes (other indexed appearing sites are same/similar)
5. The site is NOT banned and page shows up in the index using site: command even when it is in disappear mode for a few days.
6. It seems to be a CYCLE (on page 1 for a few days - disappears for a few days - back on page 1 for a few days - and so on).
Other unrelated sites I have do not have this problem. This is a GOOGLE BUG or DEFECT since little or no changes yeild a cyclical on/off/on/off/... sequence of page 1/oblivion/page 1/oblivion...
Of course, Google and other "experts" say this isn't happening or it can't happen as described, but they are wrong...it does happen.
Got the same problem but only specific to the largest Keyword in my market. Does not effect other keywords as far as I can tell. Its only my site that goes from page 1 to page 5. Ours is 4 years old the rest are older established sites who remain rooted. Site bounces between the same two positions. In my case site only falls for a day and then its back to to the same spot on page 1 for a week or two. Been like this since Feb/March this year. I put it down to a new update, or Big Daddy role out and I hope its not a pre-requisite of things to come. Bad Google, Bad!
How does your site perform on other data centres for the keyphrase that is giving your site the truffel shuffle? (assuming your gripe is keyword specific)
I also have to say that it may be older results that creep back into the SERPs. The site hald a similar position for this KW 12 months ago.
And I further think that Google has identified target subject areas or keyword groups to concentrate on and the groups are using these areas for their experimentation.
This goes some way toward explaining what I am seeing in my own world for the wild swinging of results that caused internetheaven to open this thread. Today alone, for a particular keyword search, my eight year old page has gone from 45 to 65 to 900+, three times. Yet, my other positions for different keyword searches are unchanged.
OK, whoever offered the idea that Google is serving up random datacenters, OK, I got it and that makes more sense that thinking that a single location is behaving so wildly. Thanks for adding that to the discussion.
So for my part, I'm offering these ideas:
- that we are in a six month project
- that product/service area results are being targeted
- that they have given datacenters over to every analyst in the joint.
