The Google Dance
October 26, 2007 on 4:13 pm
Filed Under:SEO
It’s no secret that everyone in the Search Engine Optimisation line of work would love to get their hands on perhaps the industry’s Biggest Secret, the Google Algorithm.
The Google Algorithm is, in simple terms, how they decide who to put at the top of YOUR search and why.
Clients are constantly asking me why certain sites are above them for certain searches or better yet, why their site’s position in the results pages shifts somewhat randomly and sometimes drastically.
While I am not privy to this vaunted algorithm, 99% of the time there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Our own site’s ranking has fluctuated wildly lately and I have traced this back to the exact day after our site redesign was launched:
As you can see from the graph above, we had secured the #1 position in Google for quite a considerable time (this graph covers about 3 months) and then dropped out of the Top 100 altogether.
This wasn’t a time to hit the Panic Button though, for experience has taught us that this is only a part of the Google Dance, where a site can relaunch and then see wide fluctuations in rankings over the course of the next few weeks, or even months.
Despite the fact that only the aesthetics have changed while the content (and even most of the code) remained the same, Google was still unsure of our site enough that they dropped us for a brief bit. They just needed some time to ensure that we remained an authority on Web Analytics, Web Consulting and Search Engine Optimisation before they’d let us regain our spot at the top.
All part of the Google Dance.
I’m happy to say that we have since stabilised at the #1 position again and will definitely hold it for the foreseeable future.