Google RankBrain Update Affecting Ranking Reports?

[David-Kley]

In the past 2 months we have been seeing a large amount of movement in our ranking reports in Moz Pro.

Here is what is going on: We run reports for around 15 different clients using Moz. We also track around an average of 100-150 different keywords for each client (some more, some less). What I have seen lately is that we have a week where the sites do great, next week a large shift down. The week after a large shift up. The next week a large shift down. Rinse, repeat.

It makes it very hard to spot the trouble areas on a page or keyword when there doesn't really seem to be a consistent way of knowing what the trends are. It appears to be random, and the next week they seem to recover, along with some that do not. We will see some keywords drop 30 places, only to regain the majority of that drop the following week.

Some of the sites have received content updates while others have remained largely untouched. It is very confusing to see this pattern, and I have tracked it for about 2 months. Is anyone seeing a similar pattern in their reports?  Could this be related to the rollout of Google's RankBrain, the new AI learning tech from Google? Most of the keywords are tracked are not long tail, and are basic local business/service type of keywords. Plumber in St Louis, etc etc

[David-Kley]

I saw this and thought it might be related: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fluctuations-continue-likely-not-penguin-21489.html

[David-Kley]

yes, they are accurate. Again just last night I looked at the latest ranking reports. We had a powerful keyword fall 31 places for no reason. The site was not updated, the content was not changed, the listings were not updated. None of the competitors edited their sites, its just very strange. You can argue that the content should have been updated, etc but I am also seeing keyword driven domains coming back, spam sites taking the place of branded sites, its crazy.

We had another main keyword fall 34 places. true we had others move up 1-4 places across the board, but this is consistent for other accounts. Slight movements on some, then a massive drop on others for no reason. These are also items that have ranked for a very long time with everything being done correctly.

What the hell is going on? Is this what we can expect from Google's new learning machine? If so, oh boy.

[ChrisAshton]

Very interesting. Possibly a silly question but have you confirmed that these ranking fluctuations are accurate?

We use a different tool and on the odd occasion we see something like this only to find it's just the tool giving false data; it shows a term drop to page three but if you Google it anonymously, you find it's still on page 1 where it was.

[David-Kley]

Most of these are sites that have been around a while and doing good. They have already been optimized and are in the external profile creation and backlinking phase. This is what makes it so confusing, as they are "good" sites. Some will go from page one to page 3, then next week go back to page 2 then back to page one.

What gives? The only explanation I can come up with is that Google is rolling out something that is taking time to settle down.

[ChrisAshton]

I don't know that it's really Rank Brain related but it's certainly frustrating!

Ranking fluctuations like that are fairly normal if you're lower down in the ranks (several pages deep) since a small change in quality can push you above a lot of competitors and search engines are basically still trying to figure out if you're trustworthy or not. if you're seeing it bounce from position 8 to position 48 and back, that's a bit more unusual.

Are these sites all quite new or at least new to quality SEO? If they're more established and rank quite well then I can't say I really have an explanation for that one!