Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
- Tedster #:3699468 [webmasterworld.com...] - the most perplexing new SERP observations are those that report cycling, sine waves, yo-yo, rollercoaster, or pick your favorite synonym. sometimes these cycles happen down in the deep results pages after a url has dropped from page 1 - an apparent penalty. and sometimes the cycling appears on page one - from 3 to 10 to 3 to 10, day after day or week after week.I don't have a site under my auspices that is showing this effect, but I've been asked to look at few that are - and so far, I can say that the phenomenon is real, but am mystified by it. I felt this way when the -950 first appeared back in 2006 or so, and slowly some understanding of that has emerged. Sure hope we can get some understanding about the yo-yo phenomenon, too.
Are we seeing something new in how it's applied?
Is it a Google Glitch or intentional ?
Does it effect only site's in penalty situations?
Does it form part of new penalty handling procedures ?
Any more questions and suggestions ?
Tedster #:3708527 This is something that quite a few sites are reporting - and it often (always?) involves position #4 during the periods when the url is on the first page of the SERPs.This seems like it must be some kind of statistical testing to me. but if that's the case, how does a url get picked to be tested - and even more, how can it "pass" the test? Some urls have been on this Google yo-yo for weeks and weeks.
The yo-yo has afflicted sites that were regular fixtures on page #1. Maybe it is unusual fluctuations in backlinks that triggers the test - that's worth watching!
I'm watching a site that was penalised on May 31 & has been flying around on a key term from position 39 down to anywhere on page 7. None of the sites URL's for any previously ranked term appear above position 41.
Tedster had a theory about "let's see" and "test" , but I'm not sure that i understand what you think they may be testing.
One of the challenges here, I think, is that some people may not be watching traffic by keyword and especially not by time of day -- but only total traffic. If the Google yo-yo starts in on one query term but not others, all they may notice is total traffic dipping. Or it may even be improving, if their previous position was not first page and now they get position 4 for some of the time every day.
As you mentioned, there are also ranking yo-yos or cycles that go on without ever getting a first page position. I'm not sure if that's the exact same thing, or just something similar.
I mentioned that the rankings might change by a set time period or a set amount of traffic. I recently thought of a third possibility - a set number of impressions, whether their clicked on or not. A couple of my connections in the SEO world have mentioned that this wouldn't make sense. Well, that may be true but something certainly is happening. The -950 didn't "make sense" to us, but it happens.
Then there's the question of what starts the yo-yo. My current operating theory is that it can be triggered by a sudden but significant change (up or down) in the ranking before filters are applied. All of a sudden ranking goes way up or way down - well, that may be something Google wants to test rather than just assign the new position in a stable way. I know of one case where a strong site was actively working to optimize for a relavant phrase where they never ranked well before. A daily yo-yo effect kicked in between #4 and #14 and it has been in place for weeks!
But there's still so much guesswork involved, because I haven't collected a large data set so far -- and even when I have an example I usually don't know the site's history.
So yes, please, any related observations would be most welcome.
Unfortunately it's a tough measure.
Forget the reasons why for now. It doesn't matter.
Your primary goal isn't to reverse-engineer Goog, it's to rank for your chosen keywords.
Reverse-engineering - knowing the "whys" are only secondary steps to an answer WHEN needed.
That said, forget about what Goog is "testing". It makes the solution more confusing than need be.
Yes, it's a "filter" and Goog is "testing" something but it's entirely within your control.
(No, it's not impressions or analytics)
You're on the threshold of "some" filter. Usually authority/links, but not necessarily.
Get better & more authoritative links and your rankings will stabilize at the top.
if it isn't links, then figure out what threshold filter you're on the cusp of (usually on-page OOP), and add to or get rid of it
I'd give you the answer, but I'd have 20 responses saying I'm wrong :P
Hey, that's OK - it happens to me all the time. I'm still willing to float ideas and get them knocked on, just for the chance to have some peer review and input from people who are watching other niches than those I am intimately familiar with.
You're on the threshold of "some" filter. Usually authority/links, but not necessarily... if it isn't links, then figure out what threshold filter you're on the cusp of
That makes sense, in the abstract, but finding what the threshold might be can be quite frustrating. I note again that the yo-yo can hit a url that was previously well-ranked, but it can also hit a url that never ranked well before. All of a sudden Google awards that url its first page 1 ranking for that query, at least part of the day.
I note again that the yo-yo can hit a url that was previously well-ranked, but it can also hit a url that never ranked well before
"450 tweaks last year..."
Link-weighting gets changed, tested, and tweaked constantly, hence the jumping around at random times. If you're a careful datacenter watcher - hi reseller - you'll spot the trends and times of day they are testing with these urls. (I like to keep one of these pages yo-yo-ing to spot macro-changes to the algo)
In 95% of the cases I've had, authority links solved the problem. The other 5% were keyword density issues.
I concur with whitenight about the 95% / 5% statement. That has always seemed to be the problem with most of the sites I track.
L8 - Saxman
In 95% of the cases I've had, authority links solved the problem
What types of cases were you observing that were in this cycle ?
My normal rankings are fine; have not really moved for several years, #1 or close to it for all locations in my niche. I also have a couple very high rankings for two word keywords that are not location specific, and they seem pretty steady. It's just the one word keyword that is bouncing around like a frog on a hot plate.
(Also, I'm not making any changes to the site at the moment, except for adding an occasional new event - for the most part its peak season is over for the year)
There are a bunch of things G has done that can contribute to the yo-yo effect. The More transparency in customized search results [googleblog.blogspot.com] post from yesterday mentions things we knew were happening, but goes into a bit more detail. The "recent searches" factor is one I think might contribute to the yo-yo:
we keep the most recent query on your browser for a limited time. After that, the information is removed from your browser and disappears immediately if you close your browser.
I'm going to play around with this over the next couple of days and see if there's anything to be seen here.
Then there's the question of what starts the yo-yo. My current operating theory is that it can be triggered by a sudden but significant change (up or down) in the ranking before filters are applied. All of a sudden ranking goes way up or way down - well, that may be something Google wants to test rather than just assign the new position in a stable way.
I absolutely agree. I have a small site that is full of unique content with some links coming in. It's more comprehensive and better organized than most of other sites with the same information. About a couple of months ago it moved from the third page to the first page (I think this was just a matter of link and site maturity), but has since then been bouncing around between #4 (usually) and bottom of the second page.
The same happened with a couple of other small sites, but they ended up settling on the second page.
At any rate, our old mental model of Google ranking being a sort of contest with a semi-stable list of first place to 1,000th place winners is not holding up very well at all.
our old mental model of Google ranking being a sort of contest with a semi-stable list of first place to 1,000th place winners is not holding up very well at all
The one thing I find a bit curious is how G is going to handle, for want of better words, the "Alta Vista effect." Remember back when AV was tired of us gaming its SERPs and started to jumble them up? That was one of the last nails as users couldn't again find what they found before. It was very frustrating for users and, as Google was just launching, they abandoned AV in droves.
My term is a not-so-often-searched one (~1k searches / month). Are people experiencing this effect also on 'bigger' terms?
I don't think this is an indication that if someone Yo Yos they're going downhill, but merely that the problems that originally triggered my specific Yo Yo case eventually bloomed into something uglier the longer they went unaddressed.
Are people experiencing this effect also on 'bigger' terms?
One example I know of is a query with 57 million results and 128 Adwords advertisers. The affected site is a "big brand" household name in the US - so it's not just the little guys who are seeing this.
What types of cases were you observing that were in this cycle ?
Whitey,
could you clarify what this means? "cases"?
Why are my pages moving in and out of the supplemental index?"
Exactly Jim!
For those who like to debate the "reasons why", I look to this, as well as, implementation of Universal Search for reasons why it happens.
(Also study Position #6 threads for clues)
It's sometimes just one, sometimes both, sometimes neither.
Like I said before, too confusing for all but the most technical SEOs and I don't like over-analyzing/discussing situations with relatively easy solutions.
could you clarify what this means? "cases"?
I guess you meant "situations" . But what I'm asking is , what were those situations - if you could open up on this it would likely assist folks understanding and relate it to their own observations in nailing the various nuances.
I'm seeing an example of the Yo Yo effect an entire site, capping it's rankings to minus "penalty" levels - but fluctuating from #4 to #7 when it should rank #1 [ and did ] .
So at least for this example, I see the Yo Yo effect applied in a penalty situation. However, it's as though Google hasn't made up it's mind of what level of penalty is to be applied.
[edited by: Whitey at 10:29 pm (utc) on July 31, 2008]
ok, without giving away too many secrets or the lessons learned from studying the SERPS diligently (instead of hearing me or anyone else give advice that may or may not apply to their site)....
A current page i'm particularly proud of, was resting on a site that dominated for every other page ...except this one url.
It would "yo-yo" between #10 and 100+ or 400+.
So I knew it "should" be an "authority" page.
Long story short, it had plenty of links but not from a particularly diverse or authoritative sites. Threw some truly authoritative links at it and it stopped yo-yo-ing from nowhere (400+) to #8 and now rests steadily at #3 behind 2 Fortune 500 juggernauts.
(2-word "main" money keyword + the hundreds of sub-keywords most people would pay some "guru" 5 figures to rank for)
Like I said before, a variety of pages on various sites were solved with similar techniques.
The "fine-tuning" involves the individual page and individual webmaster.
- individual page urls within a site , effecting movement within a small SERP range
- site wide minus penalty applied sites , moving within page ranges
- rotating results in say the top three or four results
any other's ?
I hope it means I am on the list for "promotion" :)
I haven't exactly seen the effects discussed above. What I have seen is for a site:domain.com search, that different Google IPs return a very different set of results... so I want to know from those that see the cycling if this cycling is seen at a constant Google IP, or whether it is a result of google.com connecting you to a different datacentre at a different time of day.
I'll also note that I do see an effect where if I make a search I get one set of results, and if I immediately do that search again I get a very different set of results. If I search again, I never see the initial SERP again, unless I don't make the search again until an hour or more later. If I see it again later, then again it will only be in the first search of that session for that keyword.
We are also watching a synonym (also) two-word phrase with the same root keyword and a semantically equivalent modifier. For this one, we see very little yo-yo, but a more deliberate test lasting longer periods of time, it appears.
The good news I guess if you look at Ted's theory is that we could be close to gaining permanent ground here.
One thing we noticed was that when we shifted into the four spot and then left, a news box universal result usually showed in that spot directly after. Did not notice if it was there before but it was not there when we had the 4 spot. In fact there is a news box there now. Wonder if Google is trying to gauge whether people will click on news if they display it for this term. If so, how do we get to be the randomly pulled form the second page result? Perhaps since the domain is being given more authority based on the latest crawl, and that makes it a good dual purpose test.
It would be great if next time it is at 4, we announce it and get everyone to click on it to see if that “makes it worthy” of staying. Anyone buy that one of the metrics to gauge the worthiness of a result is by CTR?
As a gauge for competition: 32 million and approx 180 ppc bids (really)(and speaking of sponsored listings how long have they been displaying those in 3 rows of four AdWords box-style listings? There are 12 per page...pretty cool)
We are looking very closely at this phenomenon and look forward to continuing to share so we can maybe figure this one out together. Sounds in fact like a great question for “Meet the Engineers” at the G dance…
That doesn't rule out the possibility that a given IP address gets routed to a different data center or server cluster - in fact, that's what I suspect happens. Calling an IP Address a "data center" is probably rather inaccurate, technically.
I tend to see the same results when looking from our T1 and on wireless. I also observe similar trends from my home wireless. This would probably be consistent with getting fed the same datacenter the majority of the time since everything is within 20 miles in Ohio.
I can't emphasize this enough.
Which is why I was so adamant(and correct) about the #6 penalty and ESPECIALLY for those pages that are affected by the Universal Search testing (ie jumping around the top 12 or so)
Google engineers don't even realize what specific pages it's affecting (again, it isn't a "YOUR SITE" issue), it's simply that you're on the edge of whatever threshold/filter that's being tested on and off that causes the yo-yo-ing
Just get the links to rank #3 (or whatever) and above and be done with it.
[edited by: whitenight at 2:07 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2008]
