Rankings changing every couple of MINUTES in Google?

[d4online]

We've been experiencing some unusual behaviour in the Google.co.uk SERPs recently...

Basically, the ranking of some of our websites for certain keywords appears to be changing by the minute.

For example, doing a search for "our keyword" might show us at #20. Then a few minutes later, doing the same search shows us at #14, and then the same search a few minutes later shows us at #26, and then sometimes we're not ranked at all, etc etc.

I know the algorithm changes a lot, but does it really change every couple of minutes?

Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour in the SERPs?

What could be causing it to happen?

[seoroyal]

I might be have more to do that google has different data centers around the world and maybe giving different data some times. Do you have this problem for a long time? I am asking this because i had this but after a few weeks it stopped and my search rankings where steady.

[BTeubner]

Curious if you check your rankings that often? Must drive you crazy!

I really only look at webmaster tool data as search is personalized, localized, etc. Are you looking from the same browser each time (like just refreshing the page)?

[d4online]

@Rick Maggio: We've seen this happening from the same browser, as well as from different browsers, all of which came from the same IP address. I've just tested it from home, and I'm unable to reproduce the problem. It seems unlikely that it's IP-related?

@remco t hart: Interesting theory about the data centers. I would've thought that Google would be using some sort of "sticky sessions" whereby all queries made from a particular IP address would be served from the same data center, but I suppose Google could be using a "round robin" approach whereby each request gets sent to a random data center regardless of IP address.

To give a little more background on the issue... the keyword that we were checking is one that we used to rank really well for a few months ago before we launched a massive re-design of the website. Since the re-design, we've dropped off the rankings completely for this keyword - that is, until today when I just checked it on a whim and saw that we were #26. A few minutes later, someone else in the office checked it and we were nowhere to be found. Then I checked again a few minutes later, and we were #20. Then I checked again a few minutes later and we were nowhere.

Bizarre.

It makes me think that Google might be "testing the waters" by slowly re-introducing our website back into the SERPs and seeing how it performs on CTR and other user-experience metrics?

[ShaMenz]

Hi D4,

Rankings are affected by a host of factors, not the least of which are personalization and localization. Given that different people search for different things in the normal course of things, it is quite likely that two different people searching on different computers will get different results.

I would be very cautious about conducting repetitive searches every few minutes as you have described, because in the end, it could be you and your helpers that are influencing what you see in the rankings!

It is important to remember that Google and Bing both utilize click through data from the SERPs to inform rankings. Every time your site is returned in the results, but not clicked-through and every time a searcher clicks through, but quickly returns to the search engine, Google and Bing are gathering information that suggests your site is not seen as relevant or helpful by searchers. Constantly running redundant searches like this could eventually have a negative impact for your site.

I would say that you might be better served by conducting an in depth analysis of the pages concerned and putting the focus on improving them. If you get this aspect right, rankings and traffic will improve naturally over time.

Hope that helps,

Sha