When new page takes over ranking - previous page drops far down

[smallcompany]

Do you see this happening:

There is a phrase that brings your page1 onto i.e. spot 7 or 12. At some point Google decides to switch to a page2 and now your site shows at spot i.e. 27 or 34.

I would think that if Google "decides" that there is a more suitable page for a phrase, that it would bring it to around the same or better spot.

Is my thinking just too linear?

I mean, the whole site is about same thing, and no matter which page you pick, that same thing is quite a bit around.
Now, going into specifics, there are pages that are a better choice than the other ones. But this is again to make me think things should not drop that much after a change from page1 to page2.

Do you see this and how do you analyze it?

Thanks

[smallcompany]

To make it bit more clear:

page1 is gone, and page2 is at the lower spot than page1 was.

[aristotle]

Maybe page1 suddenly got a penalty for that key phrase, so it dropped out of the rankings and was replaced by page2. That's a possible explanation.

Another possibility: If you have two pages that are very similar to each other, they might compete against each other for the same key phrase. You should try to avoid this by optimizing each page for a different key phrase.

[smallcompany]

Thanks.

Maybe page1 suddenly got a penalty for that key phrase, so it dropped out of the rankings and was replaced by page2

I wouldn't think about page penalty, but rather site penalty. Just my thinking, I'm not any SEO person.

If you have two pages that are very similar to each other, they might compete against each other for the same key phrase.

I thought about that and what I found puzzling was that if page1 was ranking better, why would it get replaced by the page2 which is two result pages away - down.
I can't guarantee that page2 has not been there already. If that is true, then your first option could be the true that page1 got dropped, but page2 stayed where it already was.

I guess I should develop a way of how to constantly track ranking which may give me a clue in the future.
I'm in affiliate business which makes it really hard when it's about connecting conversion and SE ranking. I say both because just good ranking does not mean success until I see the conversion from that specific rank.

[FranticFish]

There's another possible explanation. When you notice the change, are there different sites other than yours in the results? Or the same sites in different positions?

That would point to two different data sets.