Major SERP Fluctuation
-
I'm working on iDeal Chooser, a Comparison Shopping site and we've been having a weird problem with some of our major keywords on Google for the past couple of months. We keep moving between the first page of the results to disappearing completely. For example a Google search for "price drop alerts" returns idealchooser.com as result 3-5 for a while and suddenly doesn't return us at all, then we are back to the top results only to disappear again later.
We can't figure out what causes it, we didn't see any pattern and it seems completely random. We can be the 4th result for 2 weeks and suddenly we are gone for another 2 weeks. SEOmoz PRO had some good SEO suggestions which we implemented, however nothing that could explain this and even after fixing these issues this weird behavior continues.
Any idea will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
-
And now I'm back to the top SERP results for my main keywords. For example "price drop alerts" now returns my site as the 4th results after being gone from the first 5 pages for about 10 days. No major changes to the site or links to it that can explain it. I can literally pinpoint the exact hour it happen, yesterday between 6 and 7pm NY. Suddenly my Google organic traffic multiplied by 50 or even 60.
I'm obviously very happy to get decent traffic again, but knowing the past patterns, this will only last for few days followed by few more days of being gone again over and over.
If anyone has a clue what can cause this, I'd be very happy to know about it.
-
Thanks Kristina. I believe there's something else I'm missing here, not just regular back links, because of the length of time it's been going on for and the huge fluctuations I'm seeing.
On the other hand, since I can't figure out what's going on, I guess it could be anything
-
Well, I can see that competition for "price drop alerts" is just slightly outranking you, so it's possible that as you or one of your competitors gains or loses a link, rankings are reshuffled, pulling you on and off of the page.
If that's the case, increasing your back links will help keep you at the top.
Hopefully someone else on this forum has had this problem and will be able to give you more specific advice, though!
-
Sure, "price drop alerts" without the quotes, about 10 days ago I was the 5th results, now I'm practically not there at all. If the past is any indication I'll be back up at some point.
-
Ouch. Could you give us an example of one of the keywords that you're seeing these weird ranking issues with?
-
Thanks for the reply Kristina.
Yes, very much so, when I'm low I barely see any traffic from Google and when I'm high I see reasonable numbers, at least numbers I'm fine with considering the site is relatively new.
-
Yeah, very much a rollercoaster behavior, just an example: 12 days high, 10 days low, 11 days high, 10 low, 5 high, 8 low, 3 high, 7 low and it just keeps going randomly.
I made few changes to titles and URL structure, but nothing major and I've seen this up and down behavior even between changes. Every change to a page URL was replaced with 301 to the new URL, no 404 from Google crawl.
-
Is your search traffic increasing when you see your site ranking and decreasing when you don't?
-
No problem, I just know it's one of those items that you can sometimes overlook without thinking about it.
Is this something that is just going up and down like a rollercoaster? Have you changed anything from title/h2 tags and even any link structures. Also any links that may of been in google webmaster tools that are now returning 404 errors. (had a huge issue w/ some wordpress stuff and a 404 error rewrite. - Once fixed, my rankings surged almost instantly and have maintained a constant level.)
-
Thanks for the reply Travis, but that's not it. I'm using a proxy server to test my real position, so I'm not getting personalized results. Also SEOmoz PRO who I configured to track this keyword for me was saying I'm the 5th result and later that I'm not at the top 50.
-
Are you possibly looking from an account that is associated with the domain(webmaster tools/analytics/ etc...) while logged into google, vs sometimes not looking at it while logged in?
If it's your site, it seems that it will be more favorable to show you high up in rankings. At least htat is something i experience. Unless this is an automated ranking that is showing you this.
Otherwise, i have a site that i will be in the top 10 for lots of things - then if i use another browser where i'm not logged in, it will be between 10-70 spots higher.
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
-
How to get gold star reviews on SERP's
Hello I have always wanted to know: How to get gold star reviews on Google in search results! Please look at the screenshot to see what I am talking about. Please can someone share with me the knowledge required to make this happen - it would be perfect for my e-commerce website! GLkOK
Algorithm Updates | | xdunningx1 -
Bad Dates in SERPs, YouTube & Rankings (Nov. 10-18)
We've seen a lot of reports, including Q&A questions, of sites showing bad dates in Google SERPs. I've verified this bug in the wild. There are also reports of bad dates being caused by YouTube embeds, with Google taking the video date instead of the page date. I can also confirm this is happening, although I don't know if it accounts for all of the bad dates. Some people are reporting that these bad dates showing up corresponded with ranking drops. Usually, I would treat that as a coincidence (Google could easily launch an update and have a glitch on the same day), but in some of the reported cases, removing YouTube embeds led to ranking recovery soon after. I can't verify this, but I can't disregard it. There seem to be multiple reports of this recovery. I'm in communication with a Google rep, and they are unaware of any direct connection between a bad date and ranking (such as some kind of QDF effect). I've passed along some data, and they are investigating, but there may have been multiple updates in play that are making for noisy data (even for Google). There did seem to be heavy algorithm flux on November 10th and 18th, with some people speculating the latter spike was a reversal of the former. I have no evidence to support this, but MozCast data and chatter do seem to support both spikes. If you've been affected by this problem and the ranking drops are severe, it's worth temporarily removing YouTube embeds (if feasible). Replace them with direct links (or maybe a linked thumbnail) and have Google re-fetch the page. I can't guarantee it will work, but the risks are low. It's easy to restore the embed. Update (11/22) - Gary Illyes is saying on Twitter that the date problems have been fixed. If you see the proper dates cached, but have not seen rankings recover, then these may be unrelated events.
Algorithm Updates | | Dr-Pete2 -
Google SERPs showing blog comments in Answer Box?
I was recently researching Schema markup for local businesses and I was presented with an Answer Box that used blog comments as answers (at least I feel that's what they were attempting to show). This is what is says currently when I search for "schema markup hours" (screenshot also attached): 12 thoughts on “How to Use Schema Markup for Local SEO” Lauren says: March 11, 2013 at 2:22 pm. ... souleye says: March 11, 2013 at 3:29 pm. ... Daniel Bennett says: March 11, 2013 at 8:51 pm. ... sammy. says: ... Nathan says: March 11, 2013 at 11:53 pm. ... Rishav says: March 12, 2013 at 5:51 am. ... Paul Sherland says: ... keyword removed says: Right now it shows the time and date of the comment, but is this something that's new or has it been around? Thanks in advance! tp5y1od.png
Algorithm Updates | | TomBinga11250 -
Has anyone else noticed a major increase in Yelp, BBB, etc. results in local SERPs, pushing business websites further down?
Across multiple cities and markets, this seems to be a trend. "Chicago coffee shop" or "Minneapolis hair salon" or "Sacramento car repair" - outside the local 7-pack, virtually every result is Yelp, BBB, Yellowpages, etc. Is this related to algo changes, or simply a result of those national sites pumping major resources into SEO? It just seems to be suddenly far more prevalent than it was even 6 months ago.
Algorithm Updates | | kpclaypool1 -
How to show your ratings in the Google SERP
I've noticed that some organic search results are showing ratings just above the meta tag. How are these sites doing this? Example: If you search "cash advance", there is a result between #4 and #6 in the organic results. The site is "goldcashadvance.com". It's showing a 5-star rating in the result.
Algorithm Updates | | sparagi0 -
SERP and SEO Moz ranking
Until a couple of months ago the predicted SEO Moz ranking for a specific keyword was fairly close to what I actually experienced with my website. However, since then the correlation has not been good. For example, according to SEO Moz I am ranked #1 for a specific keyword with google.ca and google.com yet my site actually shows up consistently at #3 for that keyword. Has anyone else noticed this divergence?
Algorithm Updates | | casper4340 -
What do you think of Google SERP encryption?
Really interesting post by Search Engine Land about this "issue" for tracking conversion, especially for long tail keyword research. I suppose this change will be also applied on all google search pages (.ca, .fr etc.). I Really don't think Webmaster tools is a serious compensation in Analytics for this.
Algorithm Updates | | Olivier_Lambert0 -
Some rankings fluctuate dramatically
Hi guys, just a quick query this one. For one of our keywords, the rankings are fluctuating wildly. One week we went up 32 spots, then the next friday we were down 28. Nothing dramatic was being done to the site, I have not been trying to "force" any rankings instead focusing on just making our content better. It just seems odd that one week we're on page one, then a few days later we're down on page four. It seems impossible to actually maintain a reliable ranking. I know to expect some fluctuation but every week it's up 20/30, then down 20/30 the next. How can we try to give this keyword some stability? Ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | JetBookMike0