SERPs Page 2 Onwards - Why So Volatile?

[Jez123]

I'm wondering page one in my SERPs is fairly stable (the to 6 or so anyway) and page 2 and beyond seem to just blow in the wind! SERP's changing on every refresh sometimes with pages difference. I understand that there seems to be up to 3 algos or data sets running concurrently but why do they not seem to affect page 1?

[superclown2]

I suspect that Google is more reluctant to mess with page one once they've established that the sites in there are trustworthy and relevant (in that order).

[coachm]

It might just be me, but it looks to me like there are much fewer relevant results displayed as one goes past page one. It's almost like they aren't indexing (or displaying) as many sites and pages. By the third page on most queries, I find mostly irrelevant results. I don't know if that's related to the question, but I suspect it might be.

[Wilburforce]

I imagine what you are seeing will vary both between sectors and - for different terms - within them. However, even in strongly-competitive sectors the number of exceptional sites is relatively small. You would probably see a very similar phenomenon if you looked at the ranking of world singles tennis players.

[RedBar]

trustworthy and relevant (in that order).

And this is where Google.co.uk gets it so wrong wrong in my widget sector at times, they show many US results with page 2-3 onwards showing relevant UK results.

My main .com actually ranks in Google.com for many keywords yet doesn't appear anywhere in .co.uk meanwhile the US companies, none of which have any global presence outside of the US, get to rank on the first page of .co.uk.

Don't get me wrong, the sites are generally subject unique however none are relevant to UK searchers. I also get very similar results when searching other Google .tlds.

[Wilburforce]

My main .com actually ranks in Google.com for many keywords yet doesn't appear anywhere in .co.uk

That sounds like a geo-location issue to me: if your site is ranking well in non-UK SERPs then it can't be search-term relevance alone. Strange things can happen temporarily (I personally had an issue - which was when and why I joined WebmasterWorld - where my .com site appeared to have been completely de-indexed in UK searches), but if it is persistent you probably need to get a bit more forensic.

Have you set a preference for international targeting (see [support.google.com ])? The Country setting is in GSC under Search Traffic / International Targeting, although it only allows you to select one country (so might not be the best fix if you have international as well as UK markets). Where is your site hosted? If the server is not in the UK then changing to a UK server - which may not mean having to change host - might help.

Otherwise, have you registered the .co.uk variant of your domain-name? If you have (or if you haven't, but can) you could look at ways to use that, although it won't be a simple straightforward fix.

Anyway, any further details about this you can give here would be be informative.

[RedBar]

That sounds like a geo-location issue to me

It definitely is and G hasn't a clue what to do about it however I resolved it by simply launching an identical site on my company .co.uk domain, problem solved.

All my sites, including .in, .asia, .eu, .ru, .cn, br, etc are hosted in the UK and all do well in their respective languages, it seems to me that the problem G has is actually with the English language and geo-targetting. Fortunately we are a global brand in our industry therefore finding us is never an issue, it's just G's whacky algo that can be extremely frustrating.

[Wilburforce]

I resolved it by simply launching an identical site on my company .co.uk domain

What have you done about content duplication?

[Robert Charlton]

Even before everflux, my sense of the serps was that the top results were always more stable... probably because that's the way statistical distribution works. Look at the leading edge of a bell curve, with quality/relevance on the x-axis, and quantity of sites on the y-axis. The curve flattens out and gets more exponential as you move toward the right, toward higher relevance/quality, with more differentiation among the sites in the top positions.

[RedBar]

What have you done about content duplication?

Absolutely nothing, G now returns results with the .co.uk like it used to do the .com, I can't be a$$ed with their silly games which they get wrong as they try to "perfect" their algos which plainly do not work correctly otherwise why would I see so many irrelevant US results in my UK widget SERPs ... sure as heck Bing doesn't get it so wrong like this.

[aok88]

Ginormous SERPS movement today, see algoroo.com
[dejanseo.com.au...]

[toidi]

I can't be a$$ed with their silly games

smart move

[louieramos]

The patterns and movements looks like Penguin... Brace yourself..

[Awarn]

I have watched this page 1 page 2 issue for almost 4 years now. One interesting thing is on page 2 some of the sites will show an internal page outranking their normal homepage. Another thing I have seen is page one sites with as many as 5 pages listed and some of those pages are no way heavily viewed pages. Now ask why would a site on page 2 not show the main page if it fits the topic right. Probably because Google is disregarding the homepage and that is affecting the overall site ranking. Now throw in Trust factors and citation factors. From what I have seen Citation factor is outranking trust. I have seen numerous occasions where other sites will appear on page one but it is always short lived - usually a few days. So is that a situation where a site algorithmically rises and then appears on page one and then there is a manual intervention? I believe so because that is the exact scenario I saw. I made it to page one and the crawl stats immediately jumped then I was manually dropped and the crawl stats have never returned to those levels.

We can all look at Ahrefs, Majestic, SEOfrog ... and see who appears from the data that should be ranking where. Some of these sites on page one have to have some plus factor added to them manually. There is no way there should be the domain crowding that includes some of these junk pages. The only way that can happen is if there is a manual boost to that homepage.

So why is page 2 volatile - because they are natural and a lot of people are trying to improve because the system is flawed. Page 1 is not natural.

[RedBar]

Ginormous SERPS movement today, see algoroo.com

If this continues it deserves a dedicated thread! I have a hotel site that normally has hundreds into low thousands of PVs per day, in the first 12 hours of today ... 6 PVs!

It's picking up a little now but what the heck happened?

[deuces]

I agree, page 2 and beyond has been very volatile in the last year but its weird that it's only started to happening to my sites so recently. I remember in 2014, it was pretty smooth sailing, it would just gradually move up instead of dancing so much like it does nowadays.

[tangor]

I did predict that page 2 is where the battle would be fought.

It is the same battle as for page 1.

I doubt there is any nefarious actions involved, just crowding and an algo being inundated with signals, most false (regardless how YOU think your site should rank).

Keep after it, do what you can, of course! For some G is the game plan, though B and Y and Y and DGO are very viable alternatives to get the word out.

Just a reminder, kiddies, we at webmasterworld are not the only "web masters" out there and the G algo is not perfect---never has been.

Not a basher, but with the increased paid top links on page one, that real estate is even more difficult to obtain, so work on page 2!