Any time my rankings change

I heard this phrase a lot of times: "[FONT=&quot]Any time my rankings change, or even disappear from the results, I should consider that change permanent.[/FONT]"

[FONT=&quot]FACT: Rankings are fleeting. There is no such thing as ever achieving a permanent ranking in Google or any other engine. The engines constantly modify their ranking algorithms (and keep them secret to boot), and every day new pages appear on the web, some of which will by vying for your spot in the SERPs. Think of every search you do in an engine as a snapshot of that moment in time. Just because you're on the first page doesn't mean you'll stay there. And just because you drop from the first page and disappear from the top 100 doesn't mean that you're lost forever, either. Also realize that there is no real way to tell when a change happens how long that change will last. You might drop out of the top 100 for a couple of days or weeks, or it may be many months. The point is that there's no way to tell. Consider the SERPs 100% fleeting.

It's not uncommon in Google for a new site to be ranked amazingly well at first, and then to drop several hundred results down, or completely out of the database entirely, and then reappear. It's also typical for sites to bounce up and down through the rankings before stabilizing near a certain position. But even "stabilizing" is fleeting, because no ranking lasts forever, since the engines are in a constant state of flux. This is just the nature of the engines, and there's nothing that we can do about it.

The important thing to take from this is to accept that rankings change, you will rarely know why, and you shouldn't panic if your ranking drops or even if it disappears.

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