Anyone else seeing major ranking fluctuations in Google?

Ya I also have a site that went from the 1st page of Google Results, to page 14, for a couple days then back to the #1 spot on Google, for a few days then to page 7 for 2 days and counting... It is bouncing wildly, yet on other country servers, it is still the same... strange indeed. What a rollercoaster.

 

This happened to a few sites of mine as well, but im not worried because I dont try to dominate the rankings like that. All you need is real traffic!

You can read my blog ( Recent Blog Feed ) for diff tips and techniques to get steady traffic and readers!

 

That's dandy Shannon but we're not discussing a loss of traffic so much as a change in the way Google is indexing.

 

Yes, but im trying to make the point that if you were SEOing for the right reasons such as traffic and sales you would not be worried about rankings which will yield little to no results.

But thats just my opinion and I would love to be proved wrong as I want to improve myself to.

 

You wish to improve...? Then share something relative to the change in your sites indexing that this update in the algorithm may have caused and spare us your sales pitch.

If you cannot or don't wish to then find another thread.

 

I didnt have a sales pitch as my blog is 100% free to visit

However one thing I did to get my sites going again was social bookmarks, just get all your friends to do it and you should get back in a day or two.

 

I was wondering that myself. Throw a new result up, see if it attracts clicks and decent on-site time without returns to the search results....if it does well Google may not drop it that far down, though I doubt it would stay at #1. If it doesn't do as well, apply "standard" algo and it'll drop away.

User activity, I think, will become a larger influence on results. Google Desktop, Toolbar, Browser Sync, etc. etc. I think that scares some people, but in the end it really makes my job easier -- create a good site with useful content and people will stick around.

 

?????

If you don't rank well there is little chance of seeing any traffic. Your advice is a bit misguided.

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Also to the OP ...Google seems to have worked on an update recently. All my sites remain locked in upper positions however.

 

Why are you checking other countries when Google looks at the sites hosting origin and domain TLD, to determine which version of their engine to display the results that are best for the user???

 

To each his own my friend, to each his own...

 

We've had another very interesting find...

It has been known for some time that the crawlers have difficultly indexing Flash based sites with much accuracy. For those new to this it's because there is very little in the way of readable content since everything you see (images and text) is all code generated. What we discovered today, since this update, is a site that we've monitored for awhile now that ranks #1 for a non-competitive phrase but that one week ago was on page 6 of the results. This site is entirely constructed in Flash and beyong the title tag and url, has absolutely nothing the Google bot will find readable and relative to the key phrase it's indexing for. The site is also less than 8 months old and has a whopping 26 Yahoo backlinks. Two of our pages occupied the #1-2 spots for this but now have slipped down and and bounce from page two to the bottom of page one throughout the day.

I have absolutely no problem with the fact that this site now occupies the #1 position since the key phrase should return this site in this position but what's interesting here is. Have the Google brains actually figured out how to do this feat of magic or is it becoming a good ol boys network and people are making physical checks and placing sites manually? Remember this site was on page 6 (#550) as of last week.

If you would like to check this one yourself search... The Walnut Boulder you'll find "The Walnut" with no description text. Once you visit the site check out the source code... I think you find it interesting.... there's not much there! As far as Flash sites go it is nicely done.

Has anyone else seen anything similar? Would love to hear about it if you have...

 

dropped on 15 jan rankings back on 18 th jan morning

once again dropped on 23rd .hoping justtemporary

 

so its normail for us webmaster to expect the certain ranking drops.. me really is very new on SEO.. and i'm very frustated seeing my RANKING drops..

 

You will find that properly targeted traffic from search engines will result in higher conversions and more sales than referring sites (in most cases). In addition, good rankings in search engines usually result in long-term traffic whereas some methods of gaining traffic such as social bookmarking are short lived.

 

You seem a bit new to this as well.

Google recently made it public that it filed a patent app to allow them to index text in images and flash

“Digital images can include a wide variety of content…For example, digital images can illustrate landscapes, people, urban scenes, and other objects. Digital images often include text. Digital images can be captured, for example, using cameras or digital video recorders. Image text (i.e., text in an image) typically includes text of varying size, orientation, and typeface. Text in a digital image derived, for example, from an urban scene (e.g., a city street scene) often provides information about the displayed scene or location. A typical street scene includes, for example, text as part of street signs, building names, address numbers, and window signs.”

You can read more here

Google Indexing Text In Images

I would also venture to say that you are seeing upper results, as there would be little to no real competition about Walnuts

Lastly if Google is managing to boost your site... I wonder did you submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Central?

This would help them find the pages to your flash based site and allow them to index the code quicker.

Either way once they can index flash sites & images search will be much more advanced as well.

 

I don't think Flash has anything to do with it. None of the sites I'm monitoring have any flash. They are mostly Wordpress (used as a blog on some sites, CMS on others). But I don't think it's wordpress related either since an old WP site is holding page 1.

As of now I'm sticking to it being related to age.

 

I shared the details relative to the Flash site simply because it was another interesting development that took place during this algorithm update. It may be of no interest or use to you now but when sizing up your competition in the future you might want to pay closer attention to what format/architecture their using and don't discount potential competitors using Flash in whole or part since it would now seem Google is doing a much better job at reading and indexing these.

Get it?

 

Next time read my post a little slower or re-read it so you understand what is being said.

 

Try not to be such an ass the next time.

You must not know too much about SEO or how google scores things otherwise you would know adding new content today... won't be scored for several months.

You asked for an explanation about flash indexing which I gave you in a clear concise manner.

As for walnuts.....again little to no competition.....anyone can rank well for such a term.

Try not to be so ignorant.....

 

What is making your site jump is a filter added by google after the algorithm ser before you get the serp.
some people reffer to it as ssa penalties (or retrieval ranking & reodering)
basicly google just added 12 filters to jumble results for specific reasons...relevance,freshness(hence blog posts jump up and fall quick) and a few more. If you want to know more read the releases from google about 2 months ago.
to fix your particular problem you said it had "some duplicate but mostly similar content" that is part of the issue I would bet without seeing the site this issue will cause a lower quality score which will make them test you out about 9 pages back or sometimes 30-40 results if it is not too bad. Scrapped or rss content also will cause this fluctuation because of your lower quality score. You may also want to check your site for broken links.....(quick easy fix

**** remember anyone can post to this forum it doesn't make them an expert at seo so be careful of who you take advice from ( including me : ) as it may do your site more harm than good. I say this because alot of what I see in seo forums makes me cringe! research for yourself and from trusted sites! ****