Is Google Rotating Good Matches?

[JCDenver]

I have a theory that Google may be trying to be fair to white-hat-seo sites that are doing the right things with blogging, linking, social media, etc. [ie that deserve equal good positioning] are being cycled to and from the first page, perhaps in a weekly or monthly basis. My theory would be that they are purposefully doing it to give those sites more equal exposure.

My case:

I've had top rankings for http://thedogbitelawyer.com for almost all of the important terms for dog bite lawyers for a couple of years now.

When Penguin came out we lost some ground across the board, and identified that perhaps there was too much duplicate content left over from when I inherited the site. I reworked the site wording and link structure a bit and gained back positioning.

Since that time we are up and down like a yo-yo on the top terms!

Anybody else have this suspicion? If it's true, I don't need to stress, if we are bouncing around for other reason's I'd better keep stressing!

[Dr-Pete]

If Google is changing the rules, it doesn't really matter if you make changes or not, in some cases. For example, we've seen issues recently where Google tweaked domain diversity and gave more spots to the same domains. In some cases, that pushed other people down, even though those other people didn't do anything wrong. In many cases, Google seems to test changes and then adjust, so you can see ups and downs.

In other cases, I've seen situations where Google pumped up "freshness" (QDF), either overall or for certain queries. So, sites with new or updated content suddenly got a boost, and sites with older content got pushed down, even if those sites didn't do anything.

Of course, it's also always possible that your competition has made changes. Even if you change nothing, other people are constantly changing their sites.

Now, if only you are bouncing around, and the rankings are otherwise pretty consistent, then it is possibly a sign of a problem. You could be facing a potential penalty, for example, or some of your links or content are being devalued. This can range from something simple and no fault of your own (a site that used to link to use no longer does) to a full-scale penalty brewing. It can be really tough to diagnose "bounce", but it's much more common than I suspect most people think it is.

[JCDenver]

I have no doubt about what you are saying, but that doesn't explain the bouncing up and down effect when I am employing the same methodology that I always have, with the same intensity, etc.

Obviously it's combination of everything in the universe happening simultaneously, but the change is the curiosity.

If others are "out SEOing" me, and hitting on the latest tweaks by Google to rise above, I would see a trending downward, right?

I guess another way to look at what we are seeing would be that perhaps Google has set the results to show the newest updated sites first. For example, if it has 10 sites it considers worthy of a first page rank for a term, it might be pushing the one with the latest post update ahead of "equal" sites that haven't made a post that week.

Just theorizing... Jon

[Dr-Pete]

If you're coming to MozCon, you'll get the full version of this answer during my presentation Let me just say that, while we only track a few major events (like Penguin), Google has made 500+ changes/year since at least 2010 (and probably similar numbers prior to that). The algorithm changes almost 1-1/2 times/day, in other words.

For the last two weeks, rankings flux has been incredibly high - the Panda 3.7 rollout lasted 5 days, or something happened along with it. We think of rankings as static, but they aren't - some keywords Top 10 rankings can completely and permanently change within a week or so (in other words, every site in the Top 10 is replaced).

This isn't rotation, per se - it's constant tweaking and re-tweaking of the algorithm. Add to that things like freshness and personalization/localization, and rankings are changing faster and faster every day. Whether we like it or not, this is the future of Google.

[JCDenver]

This is the type of movement I'm seeing as well. Went to #2 for a top term one week, then the next week dropped 19 places. The following week was back to #3.

I think it would be fine if Google is rotating the results, as long as they are relevant results... keeps the companies with less to spend on SEO on more equal ground with the deeper pocket companies.

[William.Lau]

I mean in a perfect world the numbers equal the same but in reality all traffic and search terms have different CTRs and actions. I hope they stabalize it a bit because I've been jumping from 3-7, kind of annoying when its my domain i'm searching for (keyword not actual).

[corodan]

Might this be the future of SEO? Giving equal chances to top competitors?

[rayvensoft]

Definately seeing the same thing here.  I have moved from #1 to page 3 and back again (and everywhere in between) multiple times in the last few weeks on a number of my pages.  I have actually stopped trying to "fix" anything since there for now there does not seem to be any pattern to the recoveries or drops.  Sometimes pages I work on change, while other times pages I have not touched change.

The worst is when my page is beat by broken or blank pages.  They usually do not last for too many days, but it has happened a few times.   Very stressfull.

[William.Lau]

Same issue, my rankings are jumping from between 3-7. I am not sure why but I can confirm that rankings are jumping fairly often.

It could be due to higher domain authority jumping around. I've seen momentarily eBay's category of the site we are ranking for in position 1.