Ranking Change - Weird...

Google is officially weird.

I have been working on a website for 12months now in a fairly competitive service market.

12 months ago the website was no where in Google, after a month or so it was on page 2. After about 8 months it was on page 1 position 9/10. Slowly over the past month it has moved up and a few days ago moved to position 3. I wake up this morning and found that Google has changed the link to an inner page :S but still remains at position 3.

I have built most links to the home page, the inner page Google has now listed I never built links to till a month ago when I hit it with some blog posts purley to help the over all site NOT to get it listed.

Do you think Google will change this back to the home page or not? I can't find the home page in the first 10 pages now either... :google2: :why:

Perhaps this new inner page has been the exit page for a large portion of your traffic. So if lots of people browse 4-5 pages of your site and then spend say 3 minutes on 1 page, then they close their tab, google will determine that that final page is what should really be displayed for the search query, so they improve the users experience by removing the need to click through 5 pages before they get to the information they want.

G-S-T said:

Perhaps this new inner page has been the exit page for a large portion of your traffic. So if lots of people browse 4-5 pages of your site and then spend say 3 minutes on 1 page, then they close their tab, google will determine that that final page is what should really be displayed for the search query, so they improve the users experience by removing the need to click through 5 pages before they get to the information they want.

Click to expand...

Implying the user exits to Google (and hitting the back button when you're on an inner page, until you're back at Google, doesn't provide data to Google about what inner sites the user visited).

Or implying OP has G Analytics installed and implying Google is lying when they say its data isn't used to improve search results.

Apart from that, yes, they want to give the most relevant pages to users and if an inner page is found to have more relevant content than the homepage, they will list that one.

G-S-T said:

Perhaps this new inner page has been the exit page for a large portion of your traffic. So if lots of people browse 4-5 pages of your site and then spend say 3 minutes on 1 page, then they close their tab, google will determine that that final page is what should really be displayed for the search query, so they improve the users experience by removing the need to click through 5 pages before they get to the information they want.

Click to expand...

This makes sense to some extent but I wouldn't say this page VASTLY stands out in those stats.

It is the most clicked page after people visit the home page on the main navigation (see below from Google 29%).



I know it's hard to estimate how long people spend on each page but according to Google it is the 20th most stayed on page.



Any suggestions what I can do to influence Google to change it back?

Swiss said:

Implying the user exits to Google (and hitting the back button when you're on an inner page, until you're back at Google, doesn't provide data to Google about what inner sites the user visited).

Or implying OP has G Analytics installed and implying Google is lying when they say its data isn't used to improve search results.

Apart from that, yes, they want to give the most relevant pages to users and if an inner page is found to have more relevant content than the homepage, they will list that one.

Click to expand...

Or implying that Google has a 33% market share of browsers and that they gather data from users browsing habbits across all their platforms to improve user experience.

?Help make Google Chrome better by automatically sending usage statistics and crash reports to Google.?

pokerjk said:

This makes sense to some extent but I wouldn't say this page VASTLY stands out in those stats.

It is the most clicked page after people visit the home page on the main navigation (see below from Google 29%).

I know it's hard to estimate how long people spend on each page but according to Google it is the 20th most stayed on page.

Any suggestions what I can do to influence Google to change it back?

Click to expand...

I dont think time spent on the page is the biggest influence in this case. If it is your most visited page and people spent the least time on it, then perhaps google has determined that they found what they wanted in a short space of time.

In my initial example, i used 3 minutes, because i did not know your average times. But with the data you presented, it seems the only logical conclusion.

Regarding changing it back, im not too sure if you can, as G has determined this using their improved algo. Do you have any sitelinks showing in GWT?

G-S-T said:

I dont think time spent on the page is the biggest influence in this case. If it is your most visited page and people spent the least time on it, then perhaps google has determined that they found what they wanted in a short space of time.

In my initial example, i used 3 minutes, because i did not know your average times. But with the data you presented, it seems the only logical conclusion.

Regarding changing it back, im not too sure if you can, as G has determined this using their improved algo. Do you have any sitelinks showing in GWT?

Click to expand...

I have site links showing in SERP's when searching for the domain name which is the company name, but it doesn't show the inner page in them. Never used GWT before.

Ah well I guess I will just optimize that page for conversions now.

You can check in GWT that which page is being shown most of the that whether it is the page you can doing linkbuilding to or the other page which is currently ranking. You might be able to find some more such pages in GWT.

G does this automatically based onsite content mainly and how many internal links that page has got.

Compare the content and internal linking structure of your website to see why G is ranking that page.

Just an update and question on this. The inner page still remains the one ranked.

But what should I do about link building, concentrate on the home page like I was doing or now the inner page google has changed to? The issue is I can't do on page SEO for the inner page as well.

pokerjk said:

Just an update and question on this. The inner page still remains the one ranked.

But what should I do about link building, concentrate on the home page like I was doing or now the inner page google has changed to? The issue is I can't do on page SEO for the inner page as well.

Click to expand...

Bump on the above question.. no one been in a similar situation?