Google Rankings All Screwed Up

[DeskCoder]

Ok, so I didn't want to start another Google dance thread, but I have no idea what is going on with my site. About 1 week ago, my one page that I target 7 keywords for went from 2nd - 3rd page rankings for all keywords to not showing up at all in the main index.

I thought I was penalized because it you google the keywords in my domain name, my main page comes back #1. And when you Google "site:domain.com" all my pages return.

But here's where it gets weird:

When you google one of my other pages that I had decent ranks for (2nd or 3rd page) a page shows on like the 9th or 10th page. But then when I google THAT pages keywords, it doesn't show up. Here's what I mean:

I google "keyword 1", and the keyword 2 page shows like #100.
I google "keyword 2", and the keyword 3 page shows like #100.
I google "keyword 3", and some other page shows #100.

I have no clue what this is. I am hoping it's the Google dance, because I started getting awesome traffic. I have heard of people getting messages in Google Webmasters, but I haven't gotten anything.

Anyone got any ideas?

[mikenin]

It very much sounds like the google dance. How old is your site, and what has your linkbuilding strategy been like?

[dadamson]

Sounds like the dance to me based on what you have given us.

To add to the above poster, has your link building been consistent and what sort of links are you getting?

~Dave

[renukoot]

Its a Google Dance. May be your site was involved in frequent link building (Thousands of Link build in a day)

If the site is showing in Google then wait for some time & stop massive building. Your site will be back to normal in days.

[rhorobins]

You must not get confused if that happens to you. You're not alone, some marketers here also experience Google dance.

[Absolute Logo]

Yep! I can vouch for that! That's the Google dance

[MSC]

Check your rankings weekly or even monthly, don't check it daily as rankings tends to fluctuate due to google dance.

[dburk]

What is happening to this once magnificent forum?

It seems many folks posting to this thread are trying to redefine the meaning of the term "Google Dance".

It was originally coined to describe the massive shift in Google rankings after a major algorithm update. It is now typically used to describe any shift in rankings triggered by changes made internally at Google datacenters (anything from algorithm changes to data refreshes). The normal algorithm ranking shifts are not a "Google Dance".

Many of you guys seem to be using the term anytime you don't find yourself ranking where you want. That, in my opinion reduces the term to no useful meaning at all. If you want to learn and discuss SEO, please learn the proper terminology, or at least stop pretending you have a clue of what you are writing about.

@DeskCoder,

What you described in your OP seems to be absolutely nothing but evidence that your competitors outrank you. It has nothing to do with the "Google Dance", and everything to do with competing pages having higher relevancy scores than your page. There is no mystery here.

You need to start learning how Google scores pages for relevancy and stop looking elsewhere for excuses as to why you aren't ranking where you want.

No one here can give you specific information about your ranking issues without having more specific details about the URL you are trying to rank, and the keywords you are targeting. I can understand if you don't want to share that information, but don't look for anything except general advice if you are unwilling to share specific information.

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by dadamson

Sounds like the dance to me based on what you have given us.

To add to the above poster, has your link building been consistent and what sort of links are you getting?

~Dave

Links have been:

1) Web 2.0 pages every now and then
2) Blog commenting
3) Social Bookmark Bomb - 1000 links over 4 weeks
4) Matt LaClear's link service

Right after the bookmarking service ended is when the "penalty" occured. I thought it was because of the bookmarking service, but the service was only for the 1 page, so I don't know why all my other pages would be penalized too.

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by dburk

@DeskCoder,

What you described in your OP seems to be absolutely nothing but evidence that your competitors outrank you. It has nothing to do with the "Google Dance", and everything to do with competing pages having higher relevancy scores than your page. There is no mystery here.

You need to start learning how Google scores pages for relevancy and stop looking elsewhere for excuses as to why you aren't ranking where you want.

No one here can give you specific information about your ranking issues without having more specific details about the URL you are trying to rank, and the keywords you are targeting. I can understand if you don't want to share that information, but don't look for anything except general advice if you are unwilling to share specific information.

Not quite fella. I know (at least I think I know) how Google scores pages. And this is NOT a case of my competitors outranking me.

The one major page I try to rank for. I was one the first page (9 or 10), but now when I search, it is NO WHERE. I went through all 857 listings in Google's regular index (before I hit the supplement link), and the page was no where to be found. I had other less relevant pages show up, but not the page that targets those keywords.

[Mike Anthony]

Don, Fantastic post but as you can see its falling on dead ears. I have given up. When using crappy links there are all kinds of reasons why you lose initial position that have nothing to do with any dance but the natives want to believe what they want to believe.

[bermuda]

Your website might need thorough analysis and observation because every ranking drop case could be different from another one experienced by your colleague or other admins of sites. For example, how old your domain name is and how competitive the terms are. You have mentioned that a few days ago, your rankings were better but were your ranks fixed for a long time or you just experienced some temporary rankings boost and now suddenly all those positions are gone?

Discussions like Google dance, ranking filters, penalties, lack of contents and missing authority links are so easy to name but are all of them logical to use for every single web case we encounter? Definitely not because troubleshooting SEO projects may prove to be even more complicated than beginning to work on new plans because you need to discover which factors have lead to rankings drops. If you gain some authority links from relevant sources, you will notice improvements.

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Don, Fantastic post but as you can see its falling on dead ears. I have given up. When using crappy links there are all kinds of reasons why you lose initial position that have nothing to do with any dance but the natives want to believe what they want to believe.

What link methods would you suggest? I know the social bookmarking bomb was a bad idea, after I ordered it. What should I focus on? Something like BMR?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by DeskCoder

Not quite fella. I know (at least I think I know) how Google scores pages. And this is NOT a case of my competitors outranking me.

So um if you are at position 100 and your competitor is a number one what exactly do you call it?

From your list I don't see any quality links in the mix so alot of things can happen. links get deleted, the algo recognizes the low quality after a few crawls. the link pages roll so deep they can't be found anymore and on and on.

Run spyglass and see how many links show as missing and get some solid links with PR that stick on a page. It stabilizes things greatly. People swearing that all this massive up and down movement is a normal inescapable part of ranking are mostly doing a lot of blasting and spammy links. ever forgot a website you visited and redid a search and still found it sitting in the same spot. Happens all the time. Not all sites are bouncing around depending on age as well

[Matt Banks]

Links do get deleted if you don't do them right or have shady backlink builders do your work!

[Bofu2U]

It's a mix between dancing and your pages themselves getting mis-classified. Are the topics pretty similar? Make sure you spell out what each page is for/about on the HTML level and it'll sort itself out.

[lagger]

Originally Posted by DeskCoder

Ok, so I didn't want to start another Google dance thread, but I have no idea what is going on with my site. About 1 week ago, my one page that I target 7 keywords for went from 2nd - 3rd page rankings for all keywords to not showing up at all in the main index.

I thought I was penalized because it you google the keywords in my domain name, my main page comes back #1. And when you Google "site:domain.com" all my pages return.

But here's where it gets weird:

When you google one of my other pages that I had decent ranks for (2nd or 3rd page) a page shows on like the 9th or 10th page. But then when I google THAT pages keywords, it doesn't show up. Here's what I mean:

I google "keyword 1", and the keyword 2 page shows like #100.
I google "keyword 2", and the keyword 3 page shows like #100.
I google "keyword 3", and some other page shows #100.

I have no clue what this is. I am hoping it's the Google dance, because I started getting awesome traffic. I have heard of people getting messages in Google Webmasters, but I haven't gotten anything.

Anyone got any ideas?

This happened to me, I used a one year old site started some major seo to it. I hit first page then it tanked. I think its a dance, mines been dancing for 4 weeks now Things to check

1. Is your content spun garbage? (if yes fix that)
2. Do you have to many affiliate links on webpage? (use link cloaking with nofollow)
3. Are you over optimizing your site for said keywords. (There are free tools to check this)
4. Are random inner pages ranking in place of what page you where ranking. ( good sign of dance)

If your afraid its penalty I would start getting some high pr links. But its probably dance.

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by lagger

This happened to me, I used a one year old site started some major seo to it. I hit first page then it tanked. I think its a dance, mines been dancing for 4 weeks now Things to check

1. Is your content spun garbage? (if yes fix that)
2. Do you have to many affiliate links on webpage? (use link cloaking with nofollow)
3. Are you over optimizing your site for said keywords. (There are free tools to check this)
4. Are random inner pages ranking in place of what page you where ranking. ( good sign of dance)

If your afraid its penalty I would start getting some high pr links. But its probably dance.

1. Content is unique ... not spun.
2. I have affiliate links, maybe 5 max per page (mostly 1 or 2), all nofollow.
3. No, not overoptimizing on-page SEO.
4. YES!!!!!!!!!

[DeskCoder]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

So um if you are at position 100 and your competitor is a number one what exactly do you call it?

From your list I don't see any quality links in the mix so alot of things can happen. links get deleted, the algo recognizes the low quality after a few crawls. the link pages roll so deep they can't be found anymore and on and on.

Run spyglass and see how many links show as missing and get some solid links with PR that stick on a page. It stabilizes things greatly. People swearing that all this massive up and down movement is a normal inescapable part of ranking are mostly doing a lot of blasting and spammy links. ever forgot a website you visited and redid a search and still found it sitting in the same spot. Happens all the time. Not all sites are bouncing around depending on age as well

I am not at 100 ... I am at NOWHERE.

What's spyglass?

Thanks, I am looking into some PR links, got any suggestions on where I could get more?

[mattlaclear]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Don, Fantastic post but as you can see its falling on dead ears. I have given up. When using crappy links there are all kinds of reasons why you lose initial position that have nothing to do with any dance but the natives want to believe what they want to believe.

Since OP mentioned he is using our link service as well as a couple others I'll reply to your charge about our "crappy links". We grabbed well over 2,000 page one rankings using our links last year alone.

So take your dig somewhere else. It doesn't fly in the slightest.

OP:

Site rankings fluctuate all the time. The thing to do is just keep up your backlinking regiment. Rankings always return improved when you do.

[lagger]

Originally Posted by DeskCoder

1. Content is unique ... not spun.
2. I have affiliate links, maybe 5 max per page (mostly 1 or 2), all nofollow.
3. No, not overoptimizing on-page SEO.
4. YES!!!!!!!!!

Trying link cloaking, google hates affiliate links. If your wordpressing there are plugins. This wont fix your problem, it will just help. Your just gonna have to wait, sucks I know..

[Morbrook]

I am experiencing the exact same thing with one of my sites. This site is one year old, initial backlinking consisted of article marketing, manual blog commenting and social bookmarking as well as a few web 2.0 sites. Most pages of the site ended up around position #40 to #100 in Google.

Two months ago I slowly starting adding posts to AR, ALN and BMR linking to all pages of the site with varying achor text. Nothing to extreme, about 4-6 articles a week for AR and ALN and 1-3 posts a day for BMR. The articles for AR and ALN were unique articles that I spun using the auto spin feature on TBS (maybe this is the problem?).

After a couple of weeks all sub pages were ranking on the first or second page of google and the index page was on the third page for their respective keywords. The site ranked well and made some sales (Amazon site) for six days and then all pages dropped to page 700 or 800 for a week. I continued with the same linking building using AR, ALN, and BMR at the same pace. Some pages were ranking in the top 100 during this time but not for their targeted keywords, really strange.

After 1 week all the pages jumped back up to first or second page rankings better than they were before and the index page also ranked better than it did previously. All pages ranked well for a few days and then they all dropped again to page 700 to 800 for another week. I have been continuously building backlinks and the "cycle" has repeated itself six times now with the rankings dropping anywhere from 6 to 9 days and coming back for 2 to 3 days. I would love to find out what is causing this, I might try and stop link building for a week or two to see what happens. So much to learn in this IM business.

[lagger]

Originally Posted by Morbrook

I am experiencing the exact same thing with one of my sites. This site is one year old, initial backlinking consisted of article marketing, manual blog commenting and social bookmarking as well as a few web 2.0 sites. Most pages of the site ended up around position #40 to #100 in Google.

Two months ago I slowly starting adding posts to AR, ALN and BMR linking to all pages of the site with varying achor text. Nothing to extreme, about 4-6 articles a week for AR and ALN and 1-3 posts a day for BMR. The articles for AR and ALN were unique articles that I spun using the auto spin feature on TBS (maybe this is the problem?).

After a couple of weeks all sub pages were ranking on the first or second page of google and the index page was on the third page for their respective keywords. The site ranked well and made some sales (Amazon site) for six days and then all pages dropped to page 700 or 800 for a week. I continued with the same linking building using AR, ALN, and BMR at the same pace. Some pages were ranking in the top 100 during this time but not for their targeted keywords, really strange.

After 1 week all the pages jumped back up to first or second page rankings better than they were before and the index page also ranked better than it did previously. All pages ranked well for a few days and then they all dropped again to page 700 to 800 for another week. I have been continuously building backlinks and the "cycle" has repeated itself six times now with the rankings dropping anywhere from 6 to 9 days and coming back for 2 to 3 days. I would love to find out what is causing this, I might try and stop link building for a week or two to see what happens. So much to learn in this IM business.

Maybe a content problem? I usually run a wordpress site for this amazon stuff. I make it static site and then make pages the main sales pages. You know the hey buy this now or the world will end pages. Then I still run a blog section. Lets say this is the main nav

<home> <product 1> <product 2> <product 3> <blog> <contact>

Then I know that I can make blog posts whenever and link back to main sales pages. So lets say im gonna do a amr blast or a social network. Ill write a unique blog post then Ill blast away and my linking structure might be something like this. (assuming I wanted home page to rank)

{home|home|blog}

(now sales page)

{home|product 1|product 1|blog}

Just remember back links mixed with fresh unique content is what the sad panda wants.

[Morbrook]

Maybe a content problem? I usually run a wordpress site for this amazon stuff. I make it static site and then make pages the main sales pages. You know the hey buy this now or the world will end pages. Then I still run a blog section. Lets say this is the main nav

<home> <product 1> <product 2> <product 3> <blog> <contact>

Then I know that I can make blog posts whenever and link back to main sales pages. So lets say im gonna do a amr blast or a social network. Ill write a unique blog post then Ill blast away and my linking structure might be something like this. (assuming I wanted home page to rank)

{home|home|blog}

(now sales page)

{home|product 1|product 1|blog}

Just remember back links mixed with fresh unique content is what the sad panda wants.

I am using a similar structure using wordpress with each product review on its own page but I don't have a blog, just the review posts. I suppose I should add one as it would be an easy way to add fresh content to the site. I do use spin syntax for all keyword backlinking, around 10 keywords for home page and 5 for each review page.

Thanks for the input

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

Since OP mentioned he is using our link service as well as a couple others I'll reply to your charge about our "crappy links". We grabbed well over 2,000 page one rankings using our links last year alone.

So take your dig somewhere else. It doesn't fly in the slightest.

Sorry Matt but I am not going to redefine quality links to include or exclude anyone. There was no dig at your service. Would have written the same thing looking at the rest of the links he mentioned but in fact was responding to Don. The OP listed specific links AFTER Don's response. There was a whole lot of different links listed not yours alone. You are not the center of my universe since as you know I am not even impressed with first page placement and don't consider it ranking until at least top 4

anyway among SEOs low pr with a lot of spun content is not considered a quality link. I was not targeting your service no matter what you think or try to represent it as. end of story. no long back and forth.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by DeskCoder

I am not at 100 ... I am at NOWHERE.

What's spyglass?

SEO Spyglass is a backlink checking tool and they have a free version. Google it and install their software and check your links. There a limit on the free software of around a 1,000 I think but you will get some good ideas about your links.

[mosthost]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you've received a phrase-based penalty due to excessive anchor text link repetition. Of course this is an arbitrary definition, but it seems to me that repeating the same anchor text enough times eventually has the reverse effect than intended.

[socialbullets]

Can anyone tell me what is google dance. Sounds something interesting.

[SAmarket]

Morbrook, I am also seeing the same as you with one of my sites. Ranks for about 3 days then vanishes for 7-9 days. Then the cycle repeats. I have been looking around but not many people seem to have this same movement. Most are penalized and all rankings are like -50. I was leaning towards anchor text repetition as I may have overdone it a bit

Plan was/is to build some more links with generic anchor text and see if it comes back.

I initially thought that big G may have discounted a whole bunch of my links, but, that would not explain why it comes back once a week!

Anyone else seen this before?

[MikeFriedman]

The only time I have seen major jumps like this back and forth is when someone is using low quality links in big quantities.

Those type of links tend to disappear at a frequent rate. So not only are they ****ty, but they are also further hurting your rankings because you are typically losing nearly as many links as you are gaining.

[SAmarket]

As with Morbrook, I used mainly AR and BMR for links.

The site has never had blasts of profiles or anything like that.

[Morbrook]

Morbrook, I am also seeing the same as you with one of my sites. Ranks for about 3 days then vanishes for 7-9 days. Then the cycle repeats. I have been looking around but not many people seem to have this same movement. Most are penalized and all rankings are like -50. I was leaning towards anchor text repetition as I may have overdone it a bit

Plan was/is to build some more links with generic anchor text and see if it comes back.

I initially thought that big G may have discounted a whole bunch of my links, but, that would not explain why it comes back once a week!

Anyone else seen this before?

How many of these "cycles" have you had? My site is on the 6th one now, I am expecting it to rank back on the first page soon as it has been down for 7 days now.

I have been using one keyword per article for the homepage backlink and spinning the keyword anchors for each article for inner page backlinks. Each article gets about 25 posts to AR and 15 to ALN so the homepage keyword gets posted about 40 times (don't know if this to to much at one time) and the inner pages all get random anchor text backlinks per article. I then use a different homepage keyword anchor for the next article. Also worried it may be becuase the articles are auto spun and don't read very well.

I think I will stop for a week or two after all submitted articles have been processed and see what happens. Then maybe try manually spun articles so they read better and see what happens. I am hoping it is just from the new backlinks and will eventually settle down as the rankings are always better when the site comes back up the serps.

[Morbrook]

The only time I have seen major jumps like this back and forth is when someone is using low quality links in big quantities.

Those type of links tend to disappear at a frequent rate. So not only are they ****ty, but they are also further hurting your rankings because you are typically losing nearly as many links as you are gaining.

I have never done any blasts to this site, just AR, ALN and BMR.

[SAmarket]

I have had 3 of these bounces so far. The site dropped 7 days ago so I am assuming it will return in the next 48 hours. Looking forward to my 2-3 days of traffic (times are getting hard!).

To be honest I was busy with lots of other things so when the rankings dropped I just stopped building links for a while and have not built any links since this up and down started. Interesting as you have done the opposite.

Something must have triggered this but I am still not sure as not many people have seen this exact movement.

[Fernando Veloso]

Should I bring my popcorns?

OP,

Not quite fella. I know (at least I think I know) how Google scores pages.

And that is?

And this is NOT a case of my competitors outranking me.

No? So what it is? A penalization/filter?

[mattlaclear]

Some on this forum would have us believe that if we only use high pr links our sites will never experience the Google Dance. Cracks me up some of the stuff I read on here from the "purists".

[lagger]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

Some on this forum would have us believe that if we only use high pr links our sites will never experience the Google Dance. Cracks me up some of the stuff I read on here from the "purists".

Thats because they want you to only buy what there selling and fail so they can sell you more.

[trafficguru]

My site was ranking on the first page of Google for a lot of terms for the last 10 days and all of a sudden in the last 2 hours the traffic suddenly stopped and all the keyword phrases I was ranking for are nowhere to be found in Google search. As @Deskcoder said they didn't just drop, they disappeared all together.

My site is 4 weeks old and was getting about 300 uniques per day. It has a lot of affiliate links that are cloaked. How do I determine if they are no-follow?

I'm getting worried....

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by lagger

Thats because they want you to only buy what there selling and fail so they can sell you more.

I don't sell anything backlink related, couldn't care less if they're selling fish or meat - but I can tell you this:

People applauding one extreme or the other are the ones making their money.

And yeah, this SEO forum is so full of **** I'm gonna take a timeout AGAIN until posers and sellers get the **** out of here.

MODS... Can you guys delete the siglinks altogether in this forum?

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by lagger

Thats because they want you to only buy what there selling and fail so they can sell you more.

Do you see me selling anything link related?

I am just saying, that from my experience, the only time I have seen a site bounce around like that is from a big influx of low quality links. Low quality meaning PR 0 and PR n/a backlinks.

Nowhere did I say the sites never recover and that these kind of links can't work. In some cases, they do recover. In some cases, the site will rank depending on the level of competition.

I simply meant that I have never witnessed a site get an influx of high PR backlinks or combination of high PR and low PR backlinks and then drop 6 pages in the SERPs. NEVER. I have ONLY seen it happen with things like a bunch of forum profile links, Scrapebox blasts, Xrumer blasts, SEnuke blasts, etc.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

Some on this forum would have us believe that if we only use high pr links our sites will never experience the Google Dance. Cracks me up some of the stuff I read on here from the "purists".

People laugh all the time over things they don't understand. On our block we had kids laugh their heads off all the time when we told them where babies come from and how they are made. Many of them later had kids so I guess they figured it out. So don't worry Matt theres hope you will get that quality makes a difference - some day.

Meanwhile the rest of of us do searches every day like "internet marketing forum" and Warrior forums is always up there not bouncing around on page ten. Then theres that search I am always pointing you to "backlinks"

Same guys week in and week out. Guy at number 4 has been there for months. Must be the benefits of being ugly I guess. SIte looks alright to me but it has to be ugly in some way - Google just refuses to ask it for a dance for months now.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by lagger

Thats because they want you to only buy what there selling and fail so they can sell you more.

LOL. Two of the purists aren't selling anything link related and this one has nothing to resell more of. Newbs who think they know things.

I do get the opportunity to do my own laughing though. Its amazing that people think that real businesses out there that depend on sales on the Internet could survive if they disappeared for weeks and months at a time from where new customers could find them.

You get a good sense of how much people have REALLY done full SEO when they think full time SEOs can tell real businesses " oh you won't be getting any traffic for a month or more. Its just part of the Google dance" and still have a job. lol

[mikenin]

I can vouch for those who are saying getting quality high PR backlinks will stabilize your site in the SERPs. I do not sell any sort of linkbuilding service or anything, but from my own experience this is certainly the case. Also, your site having some age to it will help, but even that may not work if you start blasting it with thousands of profile links.

[TheFBGuy]

Lol, always fun to see Mike and Matt go at it.

Anyway OP, keep building as many high quality links as you possibly can, just don't stop what you are doing.

[JeromyS]

Dance Google Dance!

The "dance" as I understand it is when a site jumps up and down in ranking and this happens typically with new sites/posts or when there is a lot of linking action. A site obviously can be bumped by a competing site as well.

Exactly what is happening to your site is hard to determine with out really having a look at all the factors, which, as another poster mentioned, you may not want to share on the forum.

[FreeMeal]

Where are these High PR Links? How do I find them?

[TheFBGuy]

Originally Posted by FreeMeal

Where are these High PR Links? How do I find them?

Google > Angela links

[FreeMeal]

Originally Posted by TheFBGuy

Google > Angela links

Thanks you Sir. I will check that out.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by trafficguru

My site was ranking on the first page of Google for a lot of terms for the last 10 days and all of a sudden in the last 2 hours the traffic suddenly stopped and all the keyword phrases I was ranking for are nowhere to be found in Google search. As @Deskcoder said they didn't just drop, they disappeared all together.

My site is 4 weeks old and was getting about 300 uniques per day. It has a lot of affiliate links that are cloaked. How do I determine if they are no-follow?

I'm getting worried....

Hi trafficguru,

Welcome to the world of SEO. I can tell you are new in this arena, otherwise you would recognize the well known effects of QDF.

You experienced the temporary boost of QDF. This is normal, this is a good thing, so don't worry at all, things are just fine and working normally.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by JeromyS

Dance Google Dance!

The "dance" as I understand it is when a site jumps up and down in ranking and this happens typically with new sites/posts or when there is a lot of linking action. A site obviously can be bumped by a competing site as well.

Exactly what is happening to your site is hard to determine with out really having a look at all the factors, which, as another poster mentioned, you may not want to share on the forum.

Hi Jeromy,

Actually, that is not that what that term means at all, at least not in the world of SEO.

That term was originally coined to represent the massive shifting of web page rankings after a major algorithm update. Since Google has shifted to more frequent incremental algorithm updates it has shifted to represent not only algorithm updates, but data refreshes as well.

What folks are mainly talking about in this thread is called QDF by Google and is sometimes referred to as the Freshness Factor. It is simply a temporary boost in rankings for newly published content, intended to provide fresh timely results near the top of search results for many search terms.

QDF is a well known ranking factor and nothing to due with algorithm updates or data refreshes.