Google Fluctuations: New Hypotheses on the SERP Ballet

When did these fluctuations begin?

The first manifestations were recorded at the end of February 2007 and concluded by March 20, 2007. The second wave began in the last days of June 2007 and does not appear to have stopped yet.

Let’s examine point by point what unites the sites affected by this particular fluctuating condition in the search results of the Californian search engine.

How to tell if a site is in a fluctuation phase?

1) The easiest way, unfortunately, is also the most “painful”. You just need to look at the graph of site visits from our web statistics tracking software. In fact, this graph will easily highlight all the sinusoidal waves the site has gone through. For example, if we take this example:

Here we can see the behavior of visitors (thus, unfortunately, Google traffic) over the last 5 months, with an initial site down for 1 day, a rise the next day, a down for about 3 months, an up for 15 days, and the continuous fluctuation phase that characterizes this site day by day.
Furthermore, this graph allows us to see and quantify the frequency of the sinusoidal waves, which were very long from the start until a week before the Pagerank export, while now they are closer together within a few days.
2) The site’s pages are correctly indexed in Google. To verify, simply search with site:www.sitename.com
3) The site is not penalized. To verify, simply use some small queries listed in this other post (How to know if a site is penalized by Google)
4) The site is no longer present in the top Google positions (first 2 pages) for keyword searches that previously brought traffic to the site before the fluctuation. Typically, for these keywords, the site is found about 10-30 results before the omitted results on the last page (around the 950th position).
5) Not all keywords have disappeared, but only the secondary and long-tail ones (long-tail means the combination/extension of multiple keywords; for example, the long-tail of “hotel Rome” could be “hotel in Rome near the station and with a view of the Colosseum”).
6) For historical or main keywords, the site does not seem to suffer “penalties” in the SERP (search results) except for minor “natural” drops in position (a maximum of 5 or 6 positions). This allows the site to experience a 90% reduction in traffic generated by Google, not 100%.
7) The fluctuation is not relative to the site or even the page, but precisely for each keyword. Indeed, it is possible for a page to appear naturally for different keywords or be in fluctuation.

What is shown in the SERP instead of the site?
Thanks to some comparisons and analysis with colleagues and web friends, I can state that results rather unusual are usually proposed in place of the “demoted” sites, in addition to the sites that “deserve” the placement in the search engine:
– List of directories containing backlinks to the fluctuating site (provided it was listed in the directories)
– SPAM sites (spam engine, sites using black-hat techniques, etc.)
– Sites with duplicate content
– Sites lacking valid and interesting content for the end-user (e.g., an e-commerce site that offers similar materials but doesn’t have the ones being searched for)
What type of sites have been affected?
Unlike previous fluctuations, associated with new sites with little popularity and low TRUST, the fluctuation at the end of June has affected many authoritative sites with hundreds of backlinks, and content valid both for SEO and for users.
Furthermore, there seems to be no association with the nature of the affected sites. Indeed, internet sites have been demoted:
– E-commerce
– Showcase/Institutional
– With/without Adsense
– From industrial to adult content
– Etc.

When do these fluctuations occur?
Coincidentally, the start or end of fluctuations often coincides with the Pagerank export/update. It is much more complex to find the connection between these two actions performed “simultaneously” by Google.

Why do these sites suffer such penalties?
Difficult to say, but what I can say is that the SERP cleaning hypothesis is no longer reliable, given that the times are too long and would not guarantee a good service to the end user.
These are probably fluctuations due to the introduction/activation of new algorithms that Google tests and re-tests and evaluates the results obtained from the SERPs.
But how can a site get out of this situation?
My suggestion is always the same, continue promoting the site as if nothing had happened (I know it’s difficult but there are no immediate remedies currently) trying to create original content and collect spontaneous links perhaps also from sites with high TRUST (later we will see how to recognize and capture a site’s trust).
Ideally, we should become independent of Google by creating a community that is always present on the site through a blog or forum or other innovative services that involve user loyalty.