All keywords increasing rank except URL Keyword, whats going on?

[Nicktaylor1]

Hello,

Our website is a private equity firm database, privateequityfirms.com. We rank well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms but unfortunately we have been losing ranking in our main keyword and url "private equity firms" .We have ranked as high as 3rd under wikipedia. The only real changes we have made are too the sitemap that is auto generated every time some thing is changed in the database.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? I have included a Image to help show the problem.

Thank you!

MozAnalyticsPDF115_zpsddec64fa.png

[FedeEinhorn]

Google prioritizes results that they consider more valuable.

Imagine someone looking for a private equity firm database, they WON'T type private equity firms, as those who enter that are either looking for the meaning of "private equity firms" or news about "private equity firms".

Google might have ranked you on top for some time, but after the release of hummingbird, everything changed, now Google tries to "understand" what you are thinking, what you are looking for and present the best possible results, not only based on the query itself, but also taking into account search history, habits, etc.

You should also consider that your Website, compared to the others shown for that specific query, has a very low domain and page authority. Plus it lacks of any kind of social signals.