I'm seeing a curious thing with Google when I check for the ranking of a particular keyword. I enter it in the search box, click "search", and it comes up #4 or #5. Then I click "search" again for the same keyword, and it comes up #8 consistently. Yes, I know about different data centers. But this is not a random thing. It consistently comes up high in the first search, then consistently drops 3 or 4 spots if I click search for the same keyword again. Any ideas?
Yes I have tried it as well and the results are pretty much the same. I've also tried logging off my gmail account and disabling customized search based on user activity. May we know which keywords are you experiencing this 'oddness'.
It might be due to refreshing of actual rankings. What I noticed before is, few days ago I've searched for a keyword once. Then when I searched for it again, it loads as it was already saved on your computer (probably due to history and cookies), but when I hit the search button again, it loads little longer than the first one and the results seemed to be refreshed, of course the rankings changed.
Some times the ranking changes if you are logged in in gmail, webmaster and analytics at the same time.
This is unusual, may be you are using a proxy and google's system is moving you to a different data center every time your ip changes. Except of course if google is carrying out some experiments we dont know about.
That could be due to google's cached results, cookies/cache - lots of variables... Have you tried ensuring you are not using instant search, then adding &pws=0 to the end of your search URL?
I have observed a similar behavior when I searched for few keywords in my niche. Sometimes the results are too tentative. @Allthebest Google Dance is almost irrelevant unless it is the new domain which you are wanting to rank for. @mikeid22 how will cookies effect search rankings any valid reasons?