Google Flux in Rankings Or Something More Serious

[znotes]

Hi all,

Two weeks ago i noticed that one of our pages which normally ranks in the top 5 of search results dropped out of the top 50 results. I checked to make sure there were no Google penalties and checked to make sure the page was crawlable. Everything seemed fine and after a few hours our page went back into the number one position. I assumed it was a Google Flux.

This number one ranking lasted about a week, today I see my page has dropped out of the top 50 yet again and hasn't come back up. again there are no penalties and there doesn't seem to be issues with the page. I'm hoping it comes back up to the top by tomorrow.

What could be causing such a big dip multiple times?

[znotes]

The page wasn't a time sensitive query at all, it's a product page which we traditionally rank well for. I've checked out links to the page as well and i haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. I'm hoping it's testing related with the new Penguin release like you've stated.

Thanks!

[MattAntonino]

Is it related to a time-of-day query? I see what I can only describe as QDF fluctuations sometimes.

We have run the same keyword rankings every hour for 48 hours before. All 48 were unique sets of results ... the top "100" ended up including almost 300 different URLs. A lot of the fluctuation was on page 1. We saw that a search that "deserves freshness" ended up fluctuating MUCH more. Say "restaurants near Melbourne."  In the morning we often saw different results to dinner-time.Over a couple days it's hard to say but especially on mobile, those things are changing fast.

(It's the old context question. If you type "who is the President" you get info about Obama. If you type "who is his wife" you get random info. But if you say those two questions in Google mobile, it returns Michelle Obama info.)

I do think your exact issue may be some testing, though. We have an idea that the newest/last release Penguin is coming soon. Testing makes just as much sense in your case. (The results often shift, go back, shift, go back.) I would start checking links & cleaning up in any case.

[EGOL]

Check to see if there is a duplicate or near-duplicate of your content out there.  Take a unique string of text that is a 10 to 20 words long.   Search Google for it between quotes.  See if someone is republishing your content.   Try this a few times with different portions of your text.