Erratic Rankings Earlier This Month - UK

[neilmac]

Can anybody tell me what happened here?

http://5lx.co.uk/images/searchconsole2015-12-22 13.37.16.png

That is the ranking pattern of my UK site on Google UK for my main keyword.

It reached number 1 on 7 December but three or four days later, dropped like a stone.

It has been very erratic ever since, slumping as low as the mid-30s.

I checked the search console but there were no manual penalties. There is an update signalled on the chart but I can't find any info about it and anyway it seems to have happened after the drop began.

I barely touched the site between its top ranking and the slump and certainly didn't do anything to deserve that roller coaster (as far as I know).

Does anybody have any ideas?

Thanks

[MoosaHemani]

Obviously I cannot say exactly but If I would be at your place, I would dig into what kin d of update it was. If its penguin or Panda update then try to look in to your content and links and see if they are fine. Also work on building some good quality links as well.

Recently, my rankings tanked like anything (I have some site speed issues) so I thought this drop was because of that but today I looked in to rankings again and saw that the rankings are back to normal.

I am not sure but maybe you should wait for a day or two to see if it comes back to normal.

Just a thought!

[neilmac]

Thanks Moosa

There's no information about that update and it certainly hasn't shown up as Penguin or Panda in the monitoring services.

Technically, my site is fine. It's very fast. The front page loads in about 2 seconds, a lot faster than the competition and both Moz and SEMrush suggest the ranking page for that keyword is fine.

I did wait a few days and as you can see from the chart it keeps going up and down. There doesn't seem to be a 'normal' for it.

I am particularly confused about that initial drop. I still can't find a good reason for it.

Thanks

Neil

[Carson-Ward]

I've been watching some large sites, and I've seen some pretty crazy things around the 14-17th, with most sites seeing the biggest impact in ranking drops on the 16th. It was clearly an update, but I can't find reliable info on what exactly it was - probably because it affected a small niche of sites. Does your site receive a lot of traffic for local terms by chance? My working theory is another update to local search results. (Trying to show more companies that work in that area, possibly with more local packs.)

The reason I'm thinking local is because it was the biggest shift in rankings I've seen in a long long time, and tools like Mozcast didn't pick up a big change. There are so many possible combinations of local terms that it's nearly impossible to track even a small set of keyword + city terms.

Anyway, I've seen about the same as you - a big drop for some key local terms, followed by a slow and steady recovery. The results looked pretty bad when the update was first made, so maybe Google realized it wasn't a good update and has rolled some of it back.

Of course this is all just speculation. I'd love to hear what other types of terms people have seen ranking decreases on.