What happened?!

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Mark Ketzler: Google dance. Not uncommon, like they are testing your content with some traffic. I`d just go on to the next article and give this one time to settle.
  
  1d
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  Richard Hearne: Group expertMark Ketzler "Google dance" actually has a very specific meaning, and is something that no longer happens. Probably best not to use this phrase as anybody trying to find more info is likely to just get confused.
  
  22h
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  Srđan Kravić: can happen! gotta wait a week or so.
  
  23h
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  Kath J P Quisumbing: That happened to us too. One day we reached #13, that`s the highest we have been (website is 2yo), the following week we are at #40+, and now after 2 months, we are stocked at #30.
  
  23h
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  Richard Hearne: Group expertCouple of ideas:1. did the increase and subsequent decrease in rank correspond to know updates? If so, then it may indicate that some factor or factors are at or near to thresholds that Google has changed. If not, then this could just be natural ranking movements.2. depending on which tools you use to monitor rankings, they may not always be giving you accurate info. Always a good idea to validate the data.3. take a look at what is ranking as objectively as you can (maybe ask someone else to do this for you). What is Google surfacing in higher/top positions, and is your content deserving to outrank that content? This is often a tough one for site owners TBH. There`s an old saying that "SPAM" stands for "Sites Placed Above Mine". Will apply for as long as there are SERPs I think.4. it`s often good to remain patient. I can show you sites which dropped ranks, panicked, tried everything and anything, and nothing worked. I can also show you sites that did nothing, and regained their prior ranks. Google works in mysterious ways
  
  22h
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  Juan Dalisay Jr.: Does the same thing happen for Bing?
  
  22h
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  Daniel Dutton: Google often (and somewhat randomly) drops pages into higher positions if thinks they have a chance of ranking higher to get some real user metrics. It then uses these metrics as a factor in future ranking.
  
  No evidence to back this up - just many years of experience in seo and observing patterns.
  
  21h
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  Deej Nas: Question - is this your average rank for the page over a period of time, eg 30 days? Or it`s the rank today?
  
  20h
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  Matt Preston: We were on the first page for a week, then just today i got a notification that we dropped 46 places.
  
  20h
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  David Miklos Hazi: It means Google hates your page.
  
  20h
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  Caroline Mullan Adams: Sounds like a keyword Cannibalization issue. When you go up and down rapidly that`s a sign of it
  
  15h
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  Caroline Mullan Adams: It`s a possabilty not saying that`s it but it`s worth checking
  
  15h
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  Tricia Barnes: Have you checked the bounce rate for and time spent on the page? If users are not staying on the page, it signifies to Google that they are not finding value in the content.
  
  15h