Hi guys.. post-penguin my website coming in and out of serps every other day... what reason for that? ie. #11 --> #300+

[Geminineil]

We had one of the pre-penguin "unnatural links " messages in WMT - then Penguin hit April 24th/25th..

wee then set to work on Link profile...

since 19th May we have had numerous search phrases come 'back' into rank pre-penguin for a day ie.. #5 - #10 and then drop the next.. ie 300+

this has been happening across a wide range of key phrases.... in fact it may well be that the key phrases are added to the serps 'briefly' or for a set amount of time... but our ranking checker checks daily so while it appears to be every other day in and out there may be another pattern...

but the question is What is Google doing here and Why?

any suggestions?

[Geminineil]

Many of the rankings that were dropped were ranked on page 1-2 for 5+ years...

[anthonydnelson]

I agree with EGOL here and think duplicate content may be an issue. I'm guessing that your site and another similar site are switching places with the other being kicked to the supplemental index.

Try adding some more, new unique content to your pages. See if that helps.

[Chenzo]

I am having a similar issue ...but am only seeing a a few sites and it seems to be segments with grand competition and over use of keywords, like tactics that were grey hat are for sure black What tool displays ranking 200 to 300 indexed pages back in Google?

[EGOL]

There is more than one "google".

Google runs lots of experimental algos at the same time.  You could be in on one and out on the other.

Also, if your site has duplicate content that is on another site, google will sometimes display one site with that content and then another.

So keep working on linkprofile and check for duplicate content.

[crimzen]

Interesting -- so serps that have held steady for a while then dropped by that much?  It's strange to think penguin could have such a huge effect.

Curious, if you don't mind answering, the rankings that dropped, were they steady for a time and how long?

[Geminineil]

just to clarify I am NOT talking about daily serps movements - I am talking about massive drop by 200-300 places...  and show pre-Penguin results and then post-Penguin results...

[crimzen]

I've noticed similar happenings with sites I monitor and I too have been searching for an answer.  I know Google is working to improve the "real time" results to show more on topic, on date events so you can't always be sure daily of a certain spot.  Also, tools we use to run these reports are databases and only get updated so often, they are not truly "real time"

I've also noticed differences in ranking reports across several tools so which is the best?  I use seomoz, webceo, ahrefs and semrush and I rarely get an agreement amongst these.

In the long run, my opinion is that "ranking" for a certain keyword is not as important as seeing relevant traffic for a keyword coming through your seo campaigns.  So, if your ranking drops, does your traffic drop for that keyword?  If yes, then it may be an optimization thing and you need to look at link authority, competitors that are now ahead,...or maybe it was just a fluctuation in real time results.

Interested to hear what the experts have to say.