Is Google Rotating Good Matches?
-
I have a theory that Google may be trying to be fair to white-hat-seo sites that are doing the right things with blogging, linking, social media, etc. [ie that deserve equal good positioning] are being cycled to and from the first page, perhaps in a weekly or monthly basis. My theory would be that they are purposefully doing it to give those sites more equal exposure.
My case:
I've had top rankings for http://thedogbitelawyer.com for almost all of the important terms for dog bite lawyers for a couple of years now.
When Penguin came out we lost some ground across the board, and identified that perhaps there was too much duplicate content left over from when I inherited the site. I reworked the site wording and link structure a bit and gained back positioning.
Since that time we are up and down like a yo-yo on the top terms!
Anybody else have this suspicion? If it's true, I don't need to stress, if we are bouncing around for other reason's I'd better keep stressing!
-
If Google is changing the rules, it doesn't really matter if you make changes or not, in some cases. For example, we've seen issues recently where Google tweaked domain diversity and gave more spots to the same domains. In some cases, that pushed other people down, even though those other people didn't do anything wrong. In many cases, Google seems to test changes and then adjust, so you can see ups and downs.
In other cases, I've seen situations where Google pumped up "freshness" (QDF), either overall or for certain queries. So, sites with new or updated content suddenly got a boost, and sites with older content got pushed down, even if those sites didn't do anything.
Of course, it's also always possible that your competition has made changes. Even if you change nothing, other people are constantly changing their sites.
Now, if only you are bouncing around, and the rankings are otherwise pretty consistent, then it is possibly a sign of a problem. You could be facing a potential penalty, for example, or some of your links or content are being devalued. This can range from something simple and no fault of your own (a site that used to link to use no longer does) to a full-scale penalty brewing. It can be really tough to diagnose "bounce", but it's much more common than I suspect most people think it is.
-
I have no doubt about what you are saying, but that doesn't explain the bouncing up and down effect when I am employing the same methodology that I always have, with the same intensity, etc.
Obviously it's combination of everything in the universe happening simultaneously, but the change is the curiosity.
If others are "out SEOing" me, and hitting on the latest tweaks by Google to rise above, I would see a trending downward, right?
I guess another way to look at what we are seeing would be that perhaps Google has set the results to show the newest updated sites first. For example, if it has 10 sites it considers worthy of a first page rank for a term, it might be pushing the one with the latest post update ahead of "equal" sites that haven't made a post that week.
Just theorizing... Jon
-
If you're coming to MozCon, you'll get the full version of this answer during my presentation Let me just say that, while we only track a few major events (like Penguin), Google has made 500+ changes/year since at least 2010 (and probably similar numbers prior to that). The algorithm changes almost 1-1/2 times/day, in other words.
For the last two weeks, rankings flux has been incredibly high - the Panda 3.7 rollout lasted 5 days, or something happened along with it. We think of rankings as static, but they aren't - some keywords Top 10 rankings can completely and permanently change within a week or so (in other words, every site in the Top 10 is replaced).
This isn't rotation, per se - it's constant tweaking and re-tweaking of the algorithm. Add to that things like freshness and personalization/localization, and rankings are changing faster and faster every day. Whether we like it or not, this is the future of Google.
-
This is the type of movement I'm seeing as well. Went to #2 for a top term one week, then the next week dropped 19 places. The following week was back to #3.
I think it would be fine if Google is rotating the results, as long as they are relevant results... keeps the companies with less to spend on SEO on more equal ground with the deeper pocket companies.
-
I mean in a perfect world the numbers equal the same but in reality all traffic and search terms have different CTRs and actions. I hope they stabalize it a bit because I've been jumping from 3-7, kind of annoying when its my domain i'm searching for (keyword not actual).
-
Might this be the future of SEO? Giving equal chances to top competitors?
-
Definately seeing the same thing here. I have moved from #1 to page 3 and back again (and everywhere in between) multiple times in the last few weeks on a number of my pages. I have actually stopped trying to "fix" anything since there for now there does not seem to be any pattern to the recoveries or drops. Sometimes pages I work on change, while other times pages I have not touched change.
The worst is when my page is beat by broken or blank pages. They usually do not last for too many days, but it has happened a few times. Very stressfull.
-
Same issue, my rankings are jumping from between 3-7. I am not sure why but I can confirm that rankings are jumping fairly often.
It could be due to higher domain authority jumping around. I've seen momentarily eBay's category of the site we are ranking for in position 1.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Internal pages ranking over the homepage: How to optimise to rank better at Google?
Hi, We have experienced a shift in SERP from internal pages ranking over website homepage for more than a year. Previously website homepages used to rank for the primary keyword like moz.com for "SEO". Now we can see that internal pages like moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo been ranking for the primary keyword "SEO". Google is picking up these "what is ABC" pages than the homepage. All our competitor sites are ranking with these internal pages which are about "what is (primary keyword)". We do have the same internal pages "what is....", but this pages is not ranking; only our homepage is ranking. Moreover we dropped more than 15 positions after this shift in SERP. How to diagnose this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Training - How Google Crawls & Indexes Websites
Hi Does anyone know of any online training resources/webinars/training UK based that will cover the following for SEO: Why monitoring how search engines crawl and index content is important and how this can improve your SEO performance Using Google advanced operators to evaluate website indexation How to use log file data to gain insight into how search engines crawl and index content Techniques to control how search engines crawl and index content How search engines deal with JavaScript, common frameworks and SEO considerations I'm trying to develop my technical knowledge - I have always been more focused on content/KWD research/optimisation. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Removing an old Google places listing for a newer version?
Hey there, I was wondering whether you could help me out on the following; One of our clients has a Google places listing that we created for their business but it appears to be being blocked - or at least conflicting - with an old listing. As such, Google appears to be showing the old listing with an outdated URL and company name - rather than the new one. Does anyone know how I can go about removing this listing or showing that the newer one is now more relevant? Unfortunately, I don't have the logins for the old places listing. Old listing; https://plus.google.com/105224923085379238289 New listing; https://plus.google.com/b/114641937407677713536/114641937407677713536
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Google Local Algorithm Changes?
I was wondering if you have heard about any Google Local algorithm changes. We have about 200 franchise locations. Some of our locations have dropped significantly over the past few weeks. Locations that were showing up in the 1-3 positions are now no longer showing on the first page. This is for very relevant phrases for our main line of business (which is also in our business name)... ‘Phrase, CITY NAME’. These locations have plenty of positive Google reviews. We would typically rank well for a phrase like that based on our relevance. I did some brainstorming. Do you think any of these could have any impact? Google is all about things looking and feeling natural including link building, etc. We have used Yext which made a lot of changes across the web to fix addresses, etc. Do you think Google may be seeing this as unnatural? Too many changes at to many sites in to short a period of time? Along those same lines, do you think Google may be penalizing some of our franchise pages for being to ‘perfect’? It would be ‘natural’ for addresses to have some difference across the web and a bit unnatural to have them all match so perfectly. I know that Google has always stated the business name should be listed in Google Local the way it is listed to the general public. Things such as “Business Name Boston” should be listed as “Business Name”. Each of our franchise locations is named in house to reflect their geo location..... "Business Name Boston", "Business Name St. Louis". Many of our competitors also use the practice of attaching geo terms as well. Do you think we may be getting hit with a penalty now even though we have listed things on Google with the Geo term for years.... and is how WE refer to each location? Is it possible that by working with Yext, we drew attention to this practice? Should we remove our local listings geo term on Google Local? How about across the web? We are in a business that does not require customers to come to our location. Some of our locations have not suppressed the address in their local listings while others have. Many of our competitors have not. Do you think this could play into it? Some of our locations that are not showing in Local have good organic results. Have you heard anything about Google dropping Local if they show in organic? I know Google has been looking at social media more and more and I believe they will continue to do so. If our local pages have no social presence, could this adversely affect things? (I think this is probably not the case…. but wanted to throw it out there) I have noticed that in some cases where Local has dropped, we have multiple offices in that metro area. Is it possible that this could affect things? Have you heard of any Local algorithm changes? I know they are releasing a new dashboard sporadically, could this be in conjunction with a larger Local algorithm change? Our CMS tool does not allow us to change Title/Meta per page (I know... terrible!!). So every page has the same title and same meta description. (We are changing our CMS system! Can't wait!). Could this play into it? Thanks for any feedback!
Algorithm Updates | | MABES1 -
Can a google data refresh knock your pages out of the rankings?
I see that around mid November 2013 a handful of my sites pages dropped off of Google completely. It was around the data refreshes in November, and while everyone says it doesn't effect that much I was wondering if anyone knew if it could knock some of my pages out of the rankings for a specific keyword. Note - we had previously held muliple listings for different pages on our site for this particular keyword. Google kept the highest ranking and knocked the lower ones off. See attached image of our keyword ranking history to see what I mean. DcJJM0M
Algorithm Updates | | franchisesolutions0 -
How will SEO be impacted by Google's new Knowledge Graph?
With the recent announcement of Googles new Knowledge Graph, the SERP will be different. Will this present a new set of SEO best practices?
Algorithm Updates | | PerriCline0 -
Google.ca English and French returning different rankings
French Keyword : "Chauffage électrique" Currently Ranking 4th on Google.ca (French) It is not even top 50 on Google.ca (English) Why so much gap between them? Both are on Google.ca, just different language. Also, when searching the keyword on Google.ca (English), all the results shown are in french anyway ! Why is mine way off ? How can I help the ranking on the EN version? Why does Google.ca FR and EN have different rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | Kezber0 -
Why google index ip address instead of the domain name?
I have a website ,now google index ip address of it instead of the domain name,I have used 301 redirected to the domain name,but how to change the index IP to its domain name? And why google index the IP address?
Algorithm Updates | | frankfans1170