The Google Dance Oh What Fun For Internet Marketers

[Tim Buchalka]

For anyone who hasn't experience a "google dance" it can be an annoying and possibly scary experience, but rest assured it's all part of the "fun" of being an Internet Marketer.

What is a Google Dance?

Well this is really a term coined to describe the fact that Google have tens of thousands of servers each of which hold their own "copy" of where your site is ranking.

And as google updates (which happens multiple times per day, not once a quarter as many would have you believe) these servers get out of sync and consequently you can search once and see you are in a certain position and search again and "bang" you don't seem to exist.

This google dance post refers more to what the problem is and why it occurs.

Of course there are times when the reason you have "disappeared" from Google is because you have been de-indexed or penalised, usually for doing something nasty and "black hat".

But more often than not it's a temporary thing and the solution is to just keep on promoting your site as normal. In most instances your sites "comes back" into the search engine results, and over time your position stabilizes and stops "jumping around" or "dancing" as your get more backlinks, etc to the site.

So don't worry it's normal!

Cheers


Tim

[sneddo]

good post,

I find new sites "dance around" :P until you have a strong number of backlinks.

[walter]

Is there a quick and easy way of checking whether one might have - unwittingly - offended the Big G?

I find myself in the middle of what looks like a Google Dance. A blog which was working its way nicely up the rankings has suddenly gone into reverse. This may be because my main link building engine - Traffic Bug - no longer appears to be working for me (although I can find no way of checking whether this is actually so) or it may be that something that I have done with the website - some plugin that I have plugged in - has offended the Big G.

But how can one find out, without getting all technical?

[Tim Buchalka]

Is there a quick and easy way of checking whether one might have - unwittingly - offended the Big G?

I find myself in the middle of what looks like a Google Dance. A blog which was working its way nicely up the rankings has suddenly gone into reverse. This may be because my main link building engine - Traffic Bug - no longer appears to be working for me (although I can find no way of checking whether this is actually so) or it may be that something that I have done with the website - some plugin that I have plugged in - has offended the Big G.

But how can one find out, without getting all technical?

Well remember Google dance itself is not a problem, it means your rankings are just going up and doing.

Far worse if you are suffering from being in the dreaded google sand box.

One simple way to test is to do a google search as follows.

site:example.com

change the domain name as appropriate and no spaces. This will show you what pages Google has in it's index from your domain. If that comes up with nothing and you were indexed before, then something weird is going on.

But if you can see some pages, then all is ok.

Remember pretty well all pages get effected at some time with the google dance. If you think about it, your rankings could be going down because your competition is getting better and piling on the links.

This is why I say keep working.

It's very unlikely (but I guess technically possible) that a plugin would cause a problem.

See how you go with the above.

Cheers



Tim

[tonybonacci]

Yes, the google dance is scary. My site is pretty new (not even 2 months old) and I was monitoring it's ranking for my main keyword in exact match search. It was slowly moving up but now the home page is not in the results anymore . But all my pages are still indexed when I do a site: search. I'm happy and relieved to hear Tim say that this is normal and everything should get back to normal if it's still indexed.

My site is a wordpress blog and I used to have a static page as the homepage and this page was ranking. I decided to show the latest posts on the homepage and this is when the ranking disappeared. I use the all in one seo plugin so the home page is still optimized for the keyword. But maybe google is trying to figure out what to do with this sudden change....I don't know?

I'll make sure to use different anchor text links and link to different pages, but I am pleased to see I'm not the only one experiencing this google dance!!

[Tim Buchalka]

Yes, the google dance is scary. My site is pretty new (not even 2 months old) and I was monitoring it's ranking for my main keyword in exact match search. It was slowly moving up but now the home page is not in the results anymore . But all my pages are still indexed when I do a site: search. I'm happy and relieved to hear Tim say that this is normal and everything should get back to normal if it's still indexed.

My site is a wordpress blog and I used to have a static page as the homepage and this page was ranking. I decided to show the latest posts on the homepage and this is when the ranking disappeared. I use the all in one seo plugin so the home page is still optimized for the keyword. But maybe google is trying to figure out what to do with this sudden change....I don't know?

I'll make sure to use different anchor text links and link to different pages, but I am pleased to see I'm not the only one experiencing this google dance!!

Absolutely it is normal, and the fact that your site is new is more of a reason why this is happening as it seems to occur more with newer sites.

Just keeping plugging away !

When you were showing the latest posts on your homepage, I hope you were showing only a summary and not the whole post? If you were showing the whole post you would have duplicate content on your site which would not be good. So make sure you change this to a summary post on the homepage if necessary.

But keep on promoting and (change the above if applicable) and in almost all cases unless you are doing spamming or something along those lines your rankings will come back.

Regards



Tim

[tonybonacci]

When you were showing the latest posts on your homepage, I hope you were showing only a summary and not the whole post? If you were showing the whole post you would have duplicate content on your site which would not be good. So make sure you change this to a summary post on the homepage if necessary.

Thanks Tim, I never thought about that. But it does make sense, not to have duplicate content! I changed the homepage accordingly, thanks again!

[Tim Buchalka]

Happy to help. Good luck with it, and lets see how you go!

[tonybonacci]

Just wanted to post a quick update for people who are worried about the famous ''google dance''. I just kept posting content and building backlinks and my site is back in search results, higher than it was before! Thanks guys

[Tim Buchalka]

Great, thanks for the update Tony, it will help out other people who are in a similar situation to see that it is really how it works.

Cheers



Tim