Hi,

I've been noticing something strange with the SERPs on Google on a competitve search term recently. Now I've been optimising for a particular search term, and I have been doing really well, in fact I was on 1st page.

Now if I type in the search term again I'm nowhere to be seen, but the thing is there are 2 search terms including the one I am optimising for which are very very similar, and now Google has decided to rank sites on the other search term, and now I'm seeing sites on the 1st page which relate to the other similar search term, and these sites and very well known in the industy but yet I don't see any optimisation for these sites for the search term I am trying to gain rankings for.

Looks like Google are treating the two search terms the same!!

Google have been alternating the SERPS recently but it looks like this will become permanent, which I hope not.

All the content on my site is optimised for the search term which has lost the ranking, the anchor text has been optimised for the search term as well.

I hope I have made some sense, I find it quite hard when I can't really mention the search terms in public.

Has anyone come across this before?

Ozwold

Skip the other sites for the moment. You're saying that if you search for someting, one minute you rank well for the term, then the next minute you don't? What's the site and term, in that case, if that's the situation. That could happen if for some reason you're hitting one data center and then getting routed to another by chance the next.

there are 2 search terms including the one I am optimising for which are very very similar, and now Google has decided to rank sites on the other search term, and now I'm seeing sites on the 1st page which relate to the other similar search term, and these sites and very well known in the industy but yet I don't see any optimisation for these sites for the search term I am trying to gain rankings for.

So first of all, sites rank well on Google (or other search engines) even without optimization. That's been the case with all search engines from day one. SEO can help, but it isn't a guarantee.

Secondly, you have to view each term in isolation. So it sounds like you are saying that you and some other sites are ranking well for "termA," but when you search for something related -- "termB" -- the other sites still show up and you don't.

That's not showing that Google treats the terms the same and is somehow selectively removing you. That's showing each term will have different results, and for whatever reason, you aren't showing up for the second term.

Let's not have you name those other terms just yet. Someone needs to know, they can ask for PM. Let's just deal with the situation above, where you rank at one time then disappear another, and see what we find.

Skip the other sites for the moment. You're saying that if you search for someting, one minute you rank well for the term, then the next minute you don't?

That's right. However these search terms essentially are the same thing or the same product but there are 2 different search terms, I don't want to give the game away unless I send you a private message.

I even did keyword research before we designed the site just to get search volumes for each terms, and we decided to optimise the one I was doing well.

But its strange though, because I was on first page for this search term, and now type in the same search term again and you get sites related to a different search term. This is totally strange, and I really think this should be flagged?

Thanks

Ozwold.