Drop in rankings - top of first page to the bottom

[gtate]

I've seen earlier in this thread a couple of postings saying their rankings had suddenly dropped for a number of sites. I too have noticed this for primary phrases for some of my websites, typically from position #1 or #2 to position #9 or #10. I also see for one of my sites that some days the phrase is nowhere to be found, the next day I'm #1. I understand that Google uses different databanks which can have slight differences which explains why different workstations can see different results, but this has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Any thoughts?

[tedster]

It does sound like Google is using different algorithm settings between the data centers that rank you at the top and those that don't. If I had to figure out something like this, I'd start by analyzing the sites that keep their high ranking across all the data sets. Look at the number and type of backlinks they have, in particular. What signs do these urls show that is different from yours?