Dramatic Ranking Changes

[nunobaronio]

Hi,

My website is ranked on the 2nd page of Google for the /ncr. Last week suddenly it climbed up to the first page and I let my boss know about it with a quite enthusiasm and happiness

Then my boss didn't look at it on that day and next day our site was on the second page again and still is. Now I kind of lost reputation in the office, and people start questioning my comments.

It wasn't a delusion but I would like to know what it was. No one does any SEO for this 10 years old site, and I've just started an SEO campaign about 1,5 months ago. And I really thought this is it, we are on the first page. But now we are back in to the 2nd page.

Is waiting for couple days or weeks to Google to settle right approach for such cases? Or it was just a random bounce or coincidence?

Never seen such thing, so I'm quite curious about your opinions or experience if you have.

[TakeshiYoung]

One thing to watch out for is personalization, because that can skew rankings a lot. Make sure you are logged out of your Google account and using a private browsing window (cookies can skew the results) to get the best results.

Besides that, rankings do fluctuate from time to time as Google tweaks their algorithm. Rankings can even be different from location to location or person to person. Next time, I would double check the results on multiple computers before making any rankings claim. Use a 3rd party tool like Moz to confirm your rankings and show proof that your site is actually ranking where you think it's ranking.

[nunobaronio]

Thank you for your advice. I've never thought about logging out of my google account. What I usually do is open a browser that I never use which mostly is Firefox, clear the cache and cookies and do the search for google.com/ncr and the other big ones like co.uk, com.au etc.

Next time I will wait for a good while before I open my mouth, that's for sure. But I just wanted to know if it was a normal Google incident or only me.

I've search and find some interesting stuff called Yo-Yo Ranking and Google Dancing kind of terms. Not sure if it's the case.

[TakeshiYoung]

Usually your site tends to bounce around a lot when it's new, as Google tries to figure out where you belong in your SERPs. If your site has been around for 10 years, then that's probably not the case. Personalization is the first culprit I would look to, and if it wasn't that then it could just be Google testing a new algo tweak.