jumping in serps like crazy

why?

[Natashka]

My site is jumping in serps like crazy: one day #3, another day #182, third day back to page 1, then again back to page 20...

I don't understand what's going on, I don't change anything on my site (not a single word!). My competitors sites are still there, only mine is jumping like a bouncy ball. Anybody else is experiencing the same? Any ideas?

[MkSlim]

I'm in the same boat. My site is jumping like crazy not only from day to day but from morning to afternoon etc. Every few hours seems to be different

Mk

[Natashka]

Exactly! Yesterday dropped to page 20, all upset went to watch a TV show, when an hour later I returned to my PC - surprise, surprise! back on page 1. When I woke up this morning, again on page 20... no good.

[arran]

For my sites, I'm seeing the number of pages indexed and their positions change back and forth between two sets. This has been happening several times daily for the past week.

[rj87uk]

I thought this update had finished last week?

I saw a change then everything has been the same for a few days.

The best thing would be wait it out then figure out what went wrong and improve or what went good and... improve :)

[storyspinner]

I've had the same issue - have a little project going. It was getting good ranking in Yahoo, and as of saturday the page has just disappeared from Yahoo! - not even indexed now.

any clues if it's just the DC's out of sync?

[Natashka]

my site is still indexed and shows up on less popular searches, but is gone from my main keyword search.

<then figure out what went wrong>

this is exactly the problem, I cannot figure out what went wrong in my case! I didn't changed anything on my site, didn't add any links, nothing. In fact, I was working on another site in May, and didn't even ftp into it for 3 weeks.

I'm sure I have absolutely nothing to penalize me for, other than just being new kid on the block, while my competitors are old beard sites... Cannot help it, I don't think it's my site doing smth wrong, if I am gone from serps, than I am just unlucky... :(

[rj87uk]

Its never just unlucky. You dont get ranked number one by Yahoo! picking websites at random there is always a reason.

Have you lost any backlinks from good websites in the past month?
Has other new websites pushed you down?

I didnt think that yahoo cared too much about age (unlike google)

Please give more stats about your website:

How long its been live
How long its ranked well for etc.

[Natashka]

my site is up since December, at first it was not even in results, then after I got listed in Yahoo Directory, it got into the first page of results (3 - 5 position) for my very competitive keyword (29,700,000 webpages). It remained there whole April, and in May it started jumping. Not that I was "pushed down", it would be right if I got down 10-20 positions, but not from 3 to 185! Looks more like a penalty.

Maybe some site did remove my link, but it wouldn't be somebody significant, nobody strong enough to drop me down 180 positions because of that! All my really strong links (from sites with PR4 and higher, paid directories etc..) are still there...

Maybe somebody "bad" linked to me? I've noticed the visitors started coming from some bad domains: you know, the ones that totally consist of other SE results on popular keywords. I obviously didn't ask them to link to me and there is no way to ask them to remove me from their "search results", (no e-mail on the site). Can I be penalized coz they are linking to me? But this is beyond my control! And they say competitors cannot hurt you! I think they can, and somebody didn't like my new site being on 1st page in my VERY tough market.