Yep, you've been either G-smacked or competi-click-bombed.
Regardless, what's the color of your parachute?!
Looks like the dance, assuming your site is new. I wrote a case study that is tracking my rank progress for a new site.
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/white-hat-seo/392844-case-study-serp-position-tracking-new-site.html
Check it out.
If you aren't doing bad things, then there's no need to worry. It can take up to a week for the dance to complete though, so be patient and keep building links!
What have you done in the past couple of months?
For my site, all my keywords dropped at the same time, and popped back at the same time as well. This is because the keywords were targeting my root domain, not individual pages. If your 50 kw's are pointing at 50 pages, then yea, it would very much sound like a penalty.
Go check the status of your domain in google webmaster tools. Might be an update there.
Does not look at all like a penalty.
If this rank dropped only in one or two days then it is penalty..
Honestly I have no idea what the difference between a dance/penalty is.
All I know is that both can last a long time, but I have always come out.
I have had the same thing happen to my sites, especially when you say random pages ranking for the wrong KW's.
I think it is most likely just a dance, as G is reevaluating your site and the relevancy of the pages for the KW's.
You can consider yourself lucky to have never seen this before. And yes it does suck.
Just take solace in knowing that you will come out of this. Just keep doing what you do.
It's too early to judge. The good thing is that the rankings aren't dropped off the face of the earth. If it is penalized, it's nothing a steady amount of quality backlinks can't cure. I've done it before for a site that dropped over 100 ranks. I left it alone for a couple months and started building again. It is now ranked on the 2nd page for a couple keywords.
I had this happen in the middle of October, I am still not back. I hope you do not feel the same wrath.
Apparently it lasts 90 days, so I'm hoping this is true as that means I should expect a change at the end of the week.
Here's to hoping...
In the past month or two, some private blog posts, web 2.0's, article submissions, blog commenting, etc.. A few reputable services around the forum. This blows. :yell: