Hey, why did my rankings drop?

Often, as we work our way through a ranking campaign, results for a client will drop by several places.  As much as we try to explain that this is normal and expected, often it will worry some clients.  They may have been ranked in the top ten for a certain keyword and then the next week, the report show that they dropped to number fourteen.  Again, this is normal and expected and let me explain why it happens.

Google is Ever-Changing

Google is a computer system, a very large and complex computer system, but simply a computer none the less.  It is programmed to continuously crawl, read, analyze and report data from websites back to central processing computers.  In any given day, Google will process these things:

• Millions of new websites added to the web.
• Billions of lines of code, text and images that are added by websites.  Think of how much new data gets added to the web by a news site like CNN or FoxNews in a single day.  It is staggering.
• Hundreds of thousands of new videos
• Millions of new links from one site to another
• Millions of posts on bookmarking sites like Digg.

You see, it is doing a LOT of work each day.  Each thing that Google does on every day is so that it can make mathematical adjustments to the index.   The all important index.  This is the area where sites are ranked based on formulas that Google has come up with to put sites in an order from best to last.

Formulas Can Change

During the day, Google is applying their algorithms to every piece of data that enters the system.  Certain algorithms aggregate data while others apply rules to data to get an output.  While no one outside of an inner sanctum of scientists actually know the formulas and algorithms at Google, what we do know is what they tell us lay people.  Certain things on a site are important and others are not.

Every once in a while Google makes adjustments to their formulas to attempt to always provide their site visitors with the most relevant possible results.  This is a formula change.  These adjustments will move every site on their index unless the site is solidly ranked.

As recently as April 2011, Google introduced their “Panda” algorithm update which shook up rankings quite a bit.  Working on our client’s rankings, we’ve seen some significant drops in rankings.  We’re currently working to get those sites re-ranked.

Flawed Reporting Systems

Because of Google’s great complexity and system, the reporting systems simply cannot keep up.  Here is how a typical reporting system works:

• Reporting system is located somewhere.  Let’s say Charlotte, NC
• Google’s servers are located all over the world.  Thus, a reporting system in Charlotte, NC will be querying Google’s servers that are closest to Charlotte.  Make sense?
• However, we are sitting here in Denver, CO and we see and interact with Google’s systems here in Colorado, not directly in Charlotte.
• The system searches the Google (Charlotte) servers and reports back to us in Denver.   The report can be completely off from what we are actually seeing on our end here.
• Because there are regional results, the reports can be off my lots of places.  Even hundreds of places in some cases.

Bouncing Eventually Stops

The thing with bouncing is that it eventually stops happening.  As more and more effort is put into ranking a website, the bounce effect will eventually stop happening.  Because that site gets solidly ranked, has sticky content and doesn’t have a high individual “bounce” rate, the site will eventually “stick” to an area of results between 1-3 places apart.

All this to say, “don’t worry” with your rankings.  Normal changes in the algorithm will often cause your site to move back and forth.  It is very common and very expected.