Ranking position is jumping up and down

[moshebar]

hey,
in the past month and a half, i was standing on the last place in the first page of the search results for the most important search keyword for my website .

i then did ALOT of positive changes to the website,
including XHTML validation to the entire site, internal linking improvement, adding a unique descriptive <h1>,description and title to each unique page (i have 10k unique pages), and so on .

i haven't done anything major that could make google recalculate my positions etc (or at least that's what i think).

the weird thing is -
that on that given keyword i was dropped to the last place on the second page of the search results.
then i said to myself - let's let google take his time to do his magic, and it's going to be ok.

and a week after it did - now i am on the first place on the second page .

my question is -
how much time does it take google to stabilize himself and set my position (assuming my competitors haven't done any breaking changes as well) ?

can any1 bring some logic to this ?

best regards

[Quadrille]

No certainties at all.

The way I look at it is like this: the serps are all relative, rather than absolute, so when you make a change, the SE's initial reaction is a 'best guess', based on its algo and what it sees on your page. Minor changes may have little or no effect, very major changes may lead to the page being defined as 'new', with all the 'sandbox' type behaviours we know and love.

As the SE spiders other relevant pages, it will pick up more reliable info on your changed page compared to other pages it visits, until a 'complete cycle', at which time the page will settle down to a new position.

In the real world, of course, other pages are changing, disappearing and being replaced by new ones, so rather than ever achieve a permanent position, the best you'll get is a kind of 'equilibrium' until the next change occurs ...

I emphasise this is a model of how it really works, which I'm sure bears some resemblance, but it's probably grossly oversimplified.

So in most cases, major changes will generally manifest within a very few weeks, but ripple effects may continue for a few weeks more. In most cases.

I have no inside knowledge, of course - but it seems to work for me.

[moshebar]

ok,
would you call an xhtml validation a major or a minor change?
remember, that before doing these xhtml enhancements on my pages, they were quite messy (i'm even embarrassed to say there were broken links etc..),
and now my entire website is finally complete, xhtml-wise.

now i would call that a major change :)

btw - i'm not quite familiar with this sandbox thing, could you please refer me to intreseting posts in the subject ?
i can look for myself, but i guess you know exactly which posts you were talking about when u mentioned that ..

[Quadrille]

It's not what I think - or any other human, but what the SEs think!

I suspect that validation would hardly matter at all; changes of content and navigation would make much more difference. In my view, the importance of validation in SE is exactly the point you make - "before doing these xhtml enhancements on my pages, they were quite messy"

If your 'upgrade' changed the way SEs 'see' the content, then that would matter, not the 'fact' of xhtml.

I didn't have a specific 'sandbox' post in mind; but it is a topic worth having a 'broad understanding' about; if only to make you stop and think before changing page titles, let alone whole domains!