@Rick Maggio: We've seen this happening from the same browser, as well as from different browsers, all of which came from the same IP address. I've just tested it from home, and I'm unable to reproduce the problem. It seems unlikely that it's IP-related?
@remco t hart: Interesting theory about the data centers. I would've thought that Google would be using some sort of "sticky sessions" whereby all queries made from a particular IP address would be served from the same data center, but I suppose Google could be using a "round robin" approach whereby each request gets sent to a random data center regardless of IP address.
To give a little more background on the issue... the keyword that we were checking is one that we used to rank really well for a few months ago before we launched a massive re-design of the website. Since the re-design, we've dropped off the rankings completely for this keyword - that is, until today when I just checked it on a whim and saw that we were #26. A few minutes later, someone else in the office checked it and we were nowhere to be found. Then I checked again a few minutes later, and we were #20. Then I checked again a few minutes later and we were nowhere.
Bizarre.
It makes me think that Google might be "testing the waters" by slowly re-introducing our website back into the SERPs and seeing how it performs on CTR and other user-experience metrics?
