Things changing at Google, whats the deal?

[GodLikeLotus]

Just check Google this morning (UK Time) and seen our main keyword search return a result of 4th. We have been 3rd for the last 3 months and now without any reason we have dropped a place. Does anyone know whats going on?

[GodLikeLotus]

Done the same search using dance tool and the results all show our in 3rd place for main keyword, however, if we type main keyword into Google Toolbar and search, it is in 4th position in the results.

[Marcia]

>Does anyone know whats going on?

Actually, it's the same thing that's been going on for a while. The monthly update is the big change, but there have been minor shifts and changes going on all the time, all month long, in between updates.

>now without any reason we have dropped a place.

One of mine also dropped a place, also from #3 to #4. It was up from #7, it doesn't get "dated" but the site that moved into #3 does.

What I'm trying to figure is whether anything off-page could possibly be involved, or whether it's just on-page changes that are involved in the ranking shifts we're seeing. Or maybe neither one, just to keep us wondering. ;)

In this case, I've noticed that site for a while. It's a good site, very well optimized - legitimately, nothing dodgy to be found at all. It's very competitive for the first page positions for that search term, and what I'm guessing is that since they'd be watching constantly, just like we do, they might have seen us move ahead of them and done a little tweaking. I really don't know, but they do have an advantage being a "dated" site while we're not.

So whether it's so or not, as it stands now how I see it is that I'll have to do some clean as a whistle work off-page to try to get a bit of an edge and overcome the disadvantage. #1 and #2 do have easily spotted dodgy stuff. It may be "imaginary" but it's interesting to watch.

Are any of the sites, yours or any of the others, getting frequent spidering?

[GodLikeLotus]

Marcia,

Yes we had August 1st date next to the result during the last 2 days, gone now. Can I refer you to my 2nd thread here. When I search using a 1 of the many dance checkers, all the results are showing us in 3rd position, but when I search using the toolbar, we are in position 4.

[Macguru]

Hi GodLikeLotus,

Did you notice the change in URL when you use different tools to query google?

Using the Google tool bar on IE :

www.google.fr/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=fr&q=gizmo

Using Opera's tool bar:

www.google.com/search?q=gizmo&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Using google search box :

www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=gizmo&btnG=Google+Search

For a reference, try a generic search : www.google.com/search?q=gizmo