Google Results Hacked 01/22/12
SERP Blocks. Something Every SEO Should Read.
Constantly looking at the search results can slowly become an unhealthy obsession. A majority of SEOs will check their rankings hourly, each time seeing a small change and panicking. The purpose of this post is to share with you a new way to look at SERPs, based on some testing and research we have conducted over the last few months. We are confident it will change the way in which you view Google’s SERPS.
The Google Dance
Many of us are familiar with the term “Google dance”. Often used to describe a websites fluctuating positions in the search results. This is most common when a site is newly indexed or has received a high volume of links.
One way of looking at it is to simply say it’s the period of time when Google calibrates and adjusts where your site belongs in the results.
“little rant”
Note: I have often stated and will reiterate this again by saying, link building during the Google dance is potentially very harmful. It’s easy for us to panic and decide to continue link building in the attempt to stabilise our positions. Experience has taught us, by dong this you will often simply bring unwanted attention to Google Spam technology. Going down that lovely road, usually results in a website being stuck in the mud and not moving past set positions. So please do remember to be patient and not be tempted to link build during the dance ceremony.
Movements In SERPS
Personalised search, and Google in general, regularly mixing up what we see based on our locations often confuses a lot of users as to what positions their website ranks. We ask ourselves, “Is the result we are looking at because we haven’t cleared our cache or is it because we are on a different data centre to before?”
I have recently discovered a great tool called positseo which allows you to see ranking data across multiple Google data centres. It’s in French but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out. The general rule of thumb when using this tool is to remember, if the data center results don’t match up, it’s usually a sign that you’re not yet in a fixed position. This is a clean sign your website will experience some movement soon.
SERP Patterns
Having spent thousands of hours analysing the SERPS, just like many we have often attempted to discover patterns from the SERPS hourly/daily/weekly behavior. Finally after much research, we can now share with you our results.
Rotating Block Positions.
Let’s stop looking at the results as one big giant never ending results page. Now let’s look at the results as blocks. Postions 1-2-3 being block A and position 4,5,6,7 being block B. As the blocks continue the number of results within each block increases, yet we estimate the increasing number of results stops at block G. For arguments sake, let’s assume this number is 12 results max per block from block G on. From that point on it will be a set number of results per block.
Example: Block G will be around page 5, containing results
50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61.
Adding to this , the rotation of the blocks tends to be less frequent at A , yet clearly more volatile as we move on down the alphabet. SERP positions 1 and 3 (block A) will tend to be the most stable, changing on a monthly basis at times. See below an example…
So why the blocks?
I and many other SEO’s I have worked with believe Google rotates the results of each block category in order to split test the CTR (click through rates). This would make sense, as they do it for PPC, why should the organic results be different? This would explain why your website is often falling and then jumping back within its set blocks positions. Notice your website will often drop and then regain its old positions back, despite you even doing no link building?
So for me, the champagne is usually only brought out when I know I have managed to jump a block category, not a position! Equally I know when I do drop, it’s potentially Google just split testing the results for the category, simple!
As always, would appreciate other people’s feedback and input into this one. Since understanding this behavior on Google, I no longer am obsessed or panicking with small SERP movement.
This post was written by
Rav Sandhu – who has written 26 posts on Big Hit Media- SEO Blog.
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One Responses to this article
I am not sure I would understand the need to check SERP more then once a week and that is even a lot, i only run serp checks 3 times a month and I find that fluctuations are also cause by new calculations ie… serp is calculated based on the amount of penalties your onpage receives and how much penalty your offpage receives, each time a search is done for a term it calculates the onpage and offpage penalties and ranks accordingly. So each time you are cached it could find more or less penalties depending on the content created or links created etc… I also find its best to keep a steady link building process. You really never win by trying to game the SE’s. Frankly I dont care what the search engines do for updates because I focus on best practices, but some things are out of your control. Best thing to do is look at it from the search engines eyes, see where the penalties are correct them, and rank higher easier.