WordPress.com

1. rhymeswithmagic
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 3:03 AM

   I realize that Google has just implemented their new algorythm, but I have been having this problem for a while now. To sum it up, I'm having problems with indexing in Google. First it was blogsearch, with my posts taking days to show up or not showing up at all and never getting included in email alerts.

   Now the problem is also in the web ranking section. In the last few days my Google web ranking has been quite volatile. In 5 days I've gone from page2 to page 8 and then yesterday back to 2 and today all the way to 17.

   I've looked at the reasons this could be happening. It doesn't happen at all with the other blogs in my corner of the web. But last year the volatile indexing did happen to another blog that's gone now and it was a WP blog as well. It would go from page 2 or 3 to the last page and then back again. This happened every month or so.

   Could either Google be having a problem accessing wordpress.com, or could there be a problem with sitemaps being available when Google crawls my blog? I'm not too sure how it works. I do know that when I've gone to pingomatic and pinged my blog after posting that I'll get a message saying it was already pinged. But lately that doesn't happen all the time. So it seems wordpress isn't sending out the ping all the time.

   Does any of this make sense?

   Thanks for any help you can offer.

   The blog I need help with is jeffreydeanmorganunlimited.com.

2. rhymeswithmagic
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 3:04 AM

   I forgot my URL:

   http://tinyurl.com/r4uv43

3. husdal
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 5:01 AM

   In the last few days my Google web ranking has been quite volatile.

   I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Search results are meant to be dynamic. Google is always changing their algorithm to serve more personalized results, i.e. even if two persons search for the same phrase/word, they may have different results, based on a number of factors, say, previous search history and click-through.

   If 1000 people search for "blahblahblah", but only one them clicks on the 1st hit presented, but 999 click on the 234th hit on page 23, then next time around Google may present the hit from page 23 first. That's how Google makes a living, bu giving people what they want (i.e. are likely to click on).

   I don't think there's an issue with pinging. The best way to check with Google is to simply type "site:URL" in Google (Replace "URL" with the URL of your post).

   If you haven't already done so, I suggest you register your blog with Google Webmaster Tools. That way are able to follow your blog on Google.

4. pornstarbabylon
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 7:13 AM

   They have page rank going up as high as 17??

   But not all my posts show up on Google's search or their blog search. I always equate Google with IE. They both have problems which will never be explained no matter how hard we try.

5. rhymeswithmagic
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 12:17 PM

   Not page rank as in PR - I mean the actual number of pages returned. I'm usually on page 1 or 2, now it's all over the place.

6. husdal
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 12:43 PM

   rhymeswithmagic,
   What you are referring to is your position in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). And that is highly dynamic. Have you for instance tried the same search phrase in different languages in Google? You will get very different results in google.de, or google.fr, there simply is no consistency. I wouldn't worry too much. I guess is just updating and rearranging their SERP from time to time to better cater to their audience. Yes it is annoying, and it has happened to me from time to time, but it always comes back again.

7. rhymeswithmagic
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 5:53 PM

   Thanks for your response husdal.

   I'm pretty sure that rankings aren't supposed to fluctuate so drastically in the course of a couple of days. From what I've read it's a sign that something is going on. And it does seem to be a Google issue since my rankings in bing or yahoo! haven't changed.

8. husdal
   Member
   Sep 22, 2009, 6:29 PM

   I'm pretty sure that rankings aren't supposed to fluctuate so drastically in the course of a couple of days.

   Believe me, they do. I use three different computers during the day, and after coming home and searching for the same thing I did at work, more often than not I do not get the same SERP. And every once in a while my blog disappears totally from Google, and my traffic is down to a trickle. Even searching for a sentence from a post doesn't turn up anything...weird. A day or two later it reappears, and - mysteriously - a lot better ranked than before.

   I guess Google is continuously changing their algorithm and moving things around, most likely to make sure none of so-called SEO-Expert ever manages to unlock the Google code.

9. rhymeswithmagic
   Member
   Sep 23, 2009, 3:34 AM

   That's funny, because I was going to mention that too, but I get the opposite. I use 3 different computers and get the same results on each across the different browsers. And it's not once in a while, it's every second day.

   From what I've read a website shouldn't experience that kind of volatility in search results. If it does it's a sign something's wrong. I know from Googling different phrases on a variety of topics that this doesn't happen normally.

   I appreciate your input, but it just seems too strange to me that the only two blogs in my niche that have dealt with this are hosted on WordPress. It's getting a bit frustrating.

10. rhymeswithmagic
    Member
    Sep 25, 2009, 3:12 PM

    In the course of a week my site in google search results has gone from page 2 to page 8, back to 2, down to 17, up to 1 and now back to 11.

    There's no way this can be normal behaviour, with no changes made to my blog.

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