One SEO professional asked John during the submitted Question and Answer segment about their Google rankings.
Their main question was: can you think of a reason a site’s rankings on Google would fluctuate so much?
They explained that they have top 5 rankings for a host of keywords one weekend, then their site drops out of the results for about two weeks.
Then, they are seeing it rank on and off like this for months.
Their site has no technical issues. All pages on the site share the same page template, and they have consistent links throughout.
John said, though it’s hard to say without an example, it sounds like on the whole that things for the site overall are going well.
And that just one individual page is jumping in and out like this.
When this happens, usually it’s a sign that for one particular ranking algorithm factor, or one particular part of their rankings, the page isn’t super clear in the good set, or in the bad set.
And then their algorithms are kind of on the edge there.
Without knowing the site and without being able to kind of jump in and look at some of the details there, it feels like something where their systems are not sure about the relevance overall.
Or perhaps even regarding the spammy factors, or the quality overall of the site, or that particular page.
So this is something John would look into here.
This happens at approximately the 46:20 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 46:20
Can you think of a reason a site’s rankings in Google would fluctuate so much? Top five rankings for a host of keywords, one weekend, and then out of the results for about two weeks, and then seeing it ranking on and off like this for months. No technical issues. All other pages on the site that share the same page template have consistent links.
John (Answer) 46:45
I don’t know. It’s hard to say without an example. It sounds a lot like I don’t know, like, like things overall for the site are going well. And just one individual page is kind of jumping in and out like this.
And when that happens, usually that’s a sign that for one particular ranking algorithm factor or one particular part of our rankings, the page isn’t super clear in the good set, or in the bad set. And then our algorithms are kind of on the edge there.
Without knowing the site and without kind of being able to kind of jump in and look at some of the details there, it feels like something where our systems are not sure about the relevance overall, or perhaps even with regards to kind of the spamminess, or the quality overall of the site or of that particular page.
So that might be something I’d look at there. But it’s really kind of hard to say without seeing the examples. Alright, maybe we can jump back to some of the live questions. Since we still have so many people with their hands up.
I also have some more time afterwards, if any of you want to stick around and kind of go through the rest of the questions.
