Can anyone tell if Google is dancing or actually launching a crazy update? my most important keywords had dropped dramatically.

Talk to me

I don't think they are at the moment, but I could be wrong about that. When did your pages drop for your keywords? Where were they and where are they now? And how long were your pages showing for those keywords?

more importantly have sales or conversion dropped off or has your traffic decreased?

No No No... my keywords had dropped within the Natural Results for the kw traffic school we were #3 and now it has dropped all the way down to #7 also for our other website the keyword Driver Education keeps disapearing from time to time... I figured Google may be dancing, but it dont seem like it! I dont get it.. maybe an upcoming update? I just hope I get back in our SERPS...

[quote]No No No... {/quote] Then why are you bothered??

obviously the phrase(s) you are checking mean nothing useful.

3 all the way down to 7 ?? that's not a drop! that's just normal everyday (hour) movement

3 to 700 might be a reason to wonder, but again if it doesn't affect anything tangible then it doesn't matter in the slightest.

I agree with Chris. Dropping from #3 to #7 isn't exactly a big drop. An easy explanation is your competitors dod a little more seo work than you lately or a few of your links have been deweighted.

If you're traffic hasn't changed and your revenue is the same then there's nothing to worry about.

The search results change all the time and it's natural that they would. If you had said you've been #3 for the last few years and all of a sudden dropped completely out of the results than you probably were doing something that Google doesn't like and finally caught. But #3 to #7 is just normal movement.

IM happy to say that all the SEO work Ive put into this sites has been purely organic, must of my competitors are actually cheating I have found sooo many random pages full of links... anyway I have been within the top 3 for long time now... and it just dropped out of nowhere... Im not sure if chris gets the point, oviously being #3 has a much higher impact than being #7 .... I just wanted to know if you have noticed a Google dance or not.

I do get the point, just been at this game too long to care about rankings for rankings sake.

oviously being #3 has a much higher impact than being #7

only IF that phrase brings you sales and conversion, as you said these haven't changed then it probably doesn't, and you are wasting effort looking at a useless metric. Do your stats show any visitors (apart from you) for those phrases ??

Also do not forget that you are looking at only one datacentre, you are probably still no 3 in 20 others, nowhere in some etc etc.

Rankings are a useless thing to be measuring your success/failure on. What you see and what the person on a computer next to see could be two different SERPs entirely.

That specific Keyword "traffic school" helped us reduce our cost on adwords, and it does get us conversions. Of course, you are talking to me like if I was a 10 years old, or If i didnt know what im doing, I cant tell you how much we spend on advertising on google I can tell you is more than 10 k way more... my question again was if you see any Google dance behaivor... thats it, its very important for me to get back on #3 or better... trust me it does help . and trust me it does give us conversions.

thanks for talking

Well I'm seeing you at #6 now so maybe you're on your way back up. A drop from #3 to #7 while I'm sure not something you wanted to see isn't a big drop though and it's quite possibly you'll be back to #3 next week. Movement like that is pretty common and could be from a variety of things.

Might be a tweak to the algorithm that favored your competitors or just that some of your competitors have gotten a few good links recently. Could even be that a few of your links lost some favor with Google.

It's not something to get overly concerned with though since you are still in pretty good shape. I did a couple of advanced searches and I think the fall off might have to do with the anchor text of your backlinks. You rank 6th as well for the search inanchor"traffic school" while you're 4th for the intitle: search. You might just need a few more backlinks with the 'traffic school' anchor text to get back your #3 spot.

I couldn't find you for driver education on the first few pages. Have you been dropping and bouncing back? Or have you disappeared entirely? Where were you showing before and had you been showing there for a long time?

I do agree with Chris that the exact place where you rank isn't what's important. It's the traffic and even more the conversions of that traffic. Ideally you don't want all of your traffic coming from one source especially though a search engine since that can traffic can disappear overnight through no fault of your own.

Do you have a lot more keywords targetted? If you're getting traffic from enough then any one keyword losing rank shouldn't affect the business too much.

I'd say you're lucky you haven't "dropped" worse (and I don't consider anything that doesn't move you down a page or more a drop personally.)

That little stunt with the privacy policy is grey hat at best, and borderline black.

You link to at least one made-for-AdSense site (node.on.ca) and at least two sites for strictly reciprocal link purposes.

You've set up a network link farm (although to be fair, your sites at least have some content).

This site will likely continue to drop if it remains in its present state, as search engine algorithms continue to evolve. I give you about 2 months tops before you're complaining about how badly Google sucks because your site is showing supplemental results for active pages.

I don't think you came on here looking for an answer. It seems like you came on here looking for an answer that you wanted to hear: "oh, Google's dancing. It'll all be fine in 2-3 days." That's not the reality, and if you continue to drop I won't be surprised.

As far as feeling like people are treating you like a 10-year-old, it's because you're acting like one. Chris gave you some very good advice, and you threw a hissy fit because it wasn't what you wanted to hear...that's pretty childish.

It's not something to get overly concerned with though since you are still in pretty good shape. I did a couple of advanced searches and I think the fall off might have to do with the anchor text of your backlinks. You rank 6th as well for the search inanchor"traffic school" while you're 4th for the intitle: search. You might just need a few more backlinks with the 'traffic school' anchor text to get back your #3 spot.

I couldn't find you for driver education on the first few pages. Have you been dropping and bouncing back? Or have you disappeared entirely? Where were you showing before and had you been showing there for a long time?

Thanks there Vangogh .. and about that other comment, you may be right, I am a bit frustrated with the drop, I hope we get back onto top #3 as its one of our most important keywords.. if not the most.

But thanks for the comments.

BTW Im not linking to bad sites, not that i know

Joe I think with the links it's more that they're reciprocal links which Google doesn't really put much value on. The one link Adam pointed to doesn't really offer any content and it's main reason for existence is to display AdSense. It's one thing to get a link from that site and another to actually link to it.

On the drivers ed site you are using a questionable technique on the privacy policy page with the hidden (or disguised) links. If Google caught them that alone could be the reason the site dropped off the map.

Keep in mind that even if you've done everything right your position in the search results may still move around some. It's naturally. Also keep in mind that 'traffic school' and 'drivers ed' aren't the only two keyword phrases that can drive traffic to your site. If you worked on getting more visible for other phrases then this kind of change in rank isn't going to have much impact on your overall traffic.

I'd clean up the privacy policy page and either just work on getting better inbound links on the traffic school site and then optimize your site for more than just the one or two keywords.

Thanks Van