Why are Google ranking changes so drastic?

[Hermski]

Hi SEOmoz community

I'm sure this question has been asked numerous times before. At the same time there must be plenty of people out there wondering about the same thing:

Why are Google ranking changes so drastic? It's like the diva of search engines. When checking the SEOmoz ranking reports, sometimes lots of keywords improve, the next week it's vice versa. Mind though that the ranking changes are not in proportion.

While improving keywords climb up by approx. 1 - 10 positions, declining keywords always get a smack with a 15 - 25 position drop, even though these very same keywords are being targeted onsite through new content. It seems to make no difference after all

Is it possible, that keyword fluctuations are stronger for younger sites? The site I am talking about is about a year old. Is it possible that more competitive keywords see more drastic fluctuations?

Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Thanks!!

[optimind]

my site is more than 10 year old but i experienced dropped from one of my keywords. i've been holding a page 1 position for that keyword for more than 5 years until last month. My competitor on the other hand, owns a very young domain but climb up to no. 1 ranking. I noticed its because they have a lot of government website clients and they added hidden links from those websites that they developed for the government.

we recently revamped our website to make it more search engine friendly (with longer content even though i hate long content). i've seen minor improvements but hopefully we'll get back to our original ranking in a few weeks.

my site is www.myoptimind.com and the keyword i lost ranking to is web design philippines

[sherohass]

Google the king of search engines is the Major Dominant force here. They change their alogarithm constantly to their benefit. Some people who had good ranking websites that displayed lots of google adwords have dropped their rank cos google I gather do not want to pay more for ads for websites that are highly ranked especially in google searches.

Most of the websites that have dropped Rankings have not been growing or changing. Adding new content in form of Blog and Forums seems to be very popular now.

Hope this helps.

[Hermski]

Hi sherohass and Wendy Ang

Thanks for your replies! Ha, I like the one about Google continuously changing their  algorithms to their own benefit. Yeah, even though some people would disagree, it's a constant battle with a monopoly that has grown out of proportion. Therefore, if you want to rank profitably before 10 years have gone by and before you've smothered your identity across all them social networks out there, I believe there is no other way than applying a bit of black hat.

Personally I don't do heavy black hat (some I guess you even do unintentionally) as my knowledge in the area is not good enough to risk it and loose out altogether. But as mentioned before, it's annoying to see some keywords crawl up 3 positions, while another one gets the boot with a 25 positions drop.

Well, so long...