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Strange Occurrence of Internal Page and Homepage Flip-Flopping in SERP

by MikeFriedman
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Well, in the field of SEO, I guess there is always something new. In all of the time I have been at this, I have never seen this happen.

I'm working to rank a site in a very competitive niche. We'll call the site

www. thebestsiteever.com

For its primary keyword an internal page was ranking between #7 and #10 on different days. We'll call the page

www. thebestsiteever.com/the-best-page-ever

Everything was fine and then about 4-5 weeks ago, the internal page disappeared and was replaced by the homepage in the exact same ranking. So now

www. thebestsiteever.com

was sitting at #8, but

www. thebestsiteever.com/the-best-page-ever

was nowhere to be found in the top 100. Found it at #457.

After about 2 weeks, it flipped back, and the internal page was ranking, but now the homepage was nowhere to be found in the top 100.

Last week it flipped again, and the homepage was back in the top 10, but the internal page vanished. Then today, it went back to the internal page ranking.

Links have been mostly being built to the internal page. Very few though, but extremely high quality. There are no social bookmarks, blog comments, article marketing, or any of that kind of garbage being used.

I have never seen this happen. It almost has the feeling like Google is trying to catch us doing something. Like flipping the rankings to see if we shift our link building to the homepage away from the internal page. The linking has continued on the internal page throughout.

Has anyone else seen anything like this happen to their site?

It is clearly not a Google Dance type of thing as the pages literally flip-flop and take the exact ranking being held by the other. They are not bouncing up and down. They are just taking eachother's places.

There are no site crawl problems. No issues with unnatural links.
#flipflopping #homepage #internal #occurrence #page #serp #strange
  • Profile picture of the author FakeItTilYouMakeIt
    Banned
    This is happening to 3 of my sites too, exactly as you described. I noticed that the internal page that was doing the switching was the one that was most similar in content to the frontpage out of all the internal pages. That was a common factor for my 3 flipping sites (flipping as in back flips, not as a politer version of the f word, though seeing my sites do this makes me lean towards the latter expression)

    I am not going to mess with it for a bit, hope Google irons it out. I am too paranoid to act on it yet.

    It's probably just the google gods, bored and stoned as all hell, locked in their golden panic rooms saying "Dude, watch me freak out the SEO nerds... Watch, this is going to be hilarious!"
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by FakeItTilYouMakeIt View Post

      This is happening to 3 of my sites too, exactly as you described. I noticed that the internal page that was doing the switching was the one that was most similar in content to the frontpage out of all the internal pages. That was a common factor for my 3 flipping sites (flipping as in back flips, not as a politer version of the f word, though seeing my sites do this makes me lean towards the latter expression)
      The internal page is similar to the homepage, but it's a business site focused on one line of business. All the pages on the site are fairly similar. I don't think that is behind it.

      Google did file a patent sometime ago that centered around an algorithm that would provide "fake results" to catch link building activities. I'm wondering if this is part of that algorithm in practice.
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      • Profile picture of the author FakeItTilYouMakeIt
        Banned
        Thanks, now I'm terrified.
        THAT, my friend, would be diabolical. Because I'm dying to tweak and try to fix this but if that is indeed the case then it's a Google booby trap. Nothing to do but ... NOTHING
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Sounds like Google thinks both pages should rank for the same keyword, but you need a little more SEO for one of the pages to get over the hump.

    If you have access to the site, build a closed internal link wheel with the keyword. If you don't want the Index page to be the page that's ranked, don't include the Index page in the internal link wheel. Have at least 4-5 internal pages in the link wheel & you could possibly get Google Sitelinks to show below the SERP description, I'm talking about the very basic Sitelinks (4 links below SERP description).

    Make sure all internal pages in the link wheel are relevant to the page your trying to rank. If you already have the relevant internal pages it should only take a few min. to add the internal links.

    If this is a blog, does the internal page have a snippet of text & link (from the internal page) on the Index page pointing at the internal page? I've seen the Index page over power an internal page because of that snippet of text/link, especially on a new internal page.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Sounds like Google thinks both pages should rank for the same keyword, but you need a little more SEO for one of the pages to get over the hump.

      But in that case, usually you see one ranked at number 8 and the other at like #15, not outside the top 100. I've seen pages ranked closely together jostle back and forth before. Never like this though where one is there and the other is completely gone. Then they just trade.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ben Acharyaa
    This makes no sense at all. i've a site thats been flip-flopping for a while. sometimes the internal page shows up in the second page and the home page is nowhere to be found. and then after few days the internal page vanishes from the serp and the home page ranks somewhere in 2nd or 3rd page. and also i dont know if this happens or not but a site that was ranking in the local listing at "C" vanished from the first page and shows up in the 3rd page. after few days it comes back in the local listing but disappears from the 3rd page and sometimes i could see the site in both local listing and 3rd page. is this normal?
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    • Profile picture of the author TimD
      I had that happen to a client site. I had internal pages ranking for all their major keywords.
      Then, a few weeks ago, several of the internal pages disappeared and the homepage showed up in it's place.

      The obvious thing to do is put links from the page you don't want to rank to the page you do want to rank and try to move the link juice to the page you want to rank. I have to say that's working slowly for us.
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