Some of my sites dance daily i get to #2 week/2 then drop to 13-14 then come again.. some old sites are losing positions from #1 to #3-5 and being outranked by spammers with thousands of links and RD's .. new sites usualy stuck on page 2-3 not moving for few months whatever links add. I must say honestly for me never been harder to rank..
Worst of all is that its impossible to analyse and learn anything and to have 100% proof so if i made mistakes to not make again.. For example competition results 1-5 , first 2 rank somehow with only gsa spam, 3rd rank with 10 links (ahrefs,majestic,semrush all show 10-12 links) non relevant, no anchors used, content 150-200 words on homepage site it ranks 600+ keywords (i tried to find hidden pbn impossible absolutely no anything)
And results are like this across many niches, somewhere authority sites rules, even if they not niche relevant they make a post about something and rank it blazing fast..