Google dance or google penalty?

my traffic has been on a constant 20 visits a day despite all my seo efforts. I've been with a seo company for 3 months and all of a sudden my traffic jumped to 700 visits a day, mostly from google from my target keywords which were suddenly ranking in the top 7 for all of my 3 keywords.

however, this only lasted a few days. Now im down to 30-40 visits a day for the last 3 days.

I've checked my SERP in the last 72 hours and this is the results i've got for my 3 main keywords, along with my EMD search.

Date, Hour: keyword1/keyword2/keyword3 EMD:Exact Domain Match Search

15 june, 22h37: 65/64/49 EMD:27
16 june, 17h54: 37/48/51 EMD:19
17 june, 02h36: 48/48/64 EMD:32
17 june, 13h54: 66/51/63 EMD:32
17 june: 19h02: 71/62/75 EMD:33

Is this a google dance? will my rankings set back to top 10 when it's settled down? how long do google dances last?

A lot of sites are bouncing around at the moment. I'd wait to draw any conclusions on your ranks.

Mine too & some are huge bounces.

I've got a 3 week old EMD I had at #5 through relevant comments and a press release - then I bought some major services, it's now no-where to be seen. Probably temporary.

Google dance is driving me crazy.

How does one tell the difference.

fad3r said:

How does one tell the difference.

Click to expand...

I dont think you can.

Same here, just stay put

Try this.. copy paste the first paragraph of your site to google and search for it.. if your site comes first, most probably its a dance, if your site is no where to be found or not ranking for your first paragraph.. most probably it's a penalty.

I read this somewhere here in BHW.. and tried it to my sites and its pretty much correct.

testdrive said:

Try this.. copy paste the first paragraph of your site to google and search for it.. if your site comes first, most probably its a dance, if your site is no where to be found or not ranking for your first paragraph.. most probably it's a penalty.

I read this somewhere here in BHW.. and tried it to my sites and its pretty much correct.

Click to expand...

Yes I agree with testdrive. It might be a good method whether it's google dance or penalty.