Abnormal maps fluctuations

[Timur]

Hello,

my business was steadily improving rankings on maps, thanks to this forum for support! Here you can see rankings for the main keyword Jul1 vs Nov2. But yesterday, Nov 2, rankings significantly dropped overnight. The position dropped from 1 to 10, and further. Then, by the end of the day, it recovered most of the rankings. But now it has dropped again! Can anyone tell me what is going on?

The one more bizarre thing in SEO is that my website constantly jumps across positions 2-6 during the day, according to the Google Ads Anonymous preview tool.

I have never seen something like that before.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It's most likely related to this. I would just hang on for a few days to see how it shakes out.

 

[Timur]

Oh wow @Colan Nielsen , hope this is for the better

 

[JS Girard]

Oh that's interesting; I've been going through the businesses that seem to have benefited and they also all have primary categories in common, which were previously lower ranked (but more relevant than 'laboratory' in your case!). Have you experimented with changing primary category? I guess I'll leave it a bit and see if things settle down..

Sounds like a set of queries may have been reanalysed to center on a different primary category. For two years we keep seeing wild swing with the French keyword "peinture au pistolet" every two core updates or so (hardware store -> painting/spraypainting contractors -> paint stores). See also this discussion for a different example.

 

[Timur]

Hey @rod.philip , any updates? Mine is going the same way as you described - I rank 1st when the business opens in the morning, the rank holds for 30 minutes, and then drops.

@JoyHawkins I used several different tools with the same results.

The local flux fluctuates as bad as on Nov 2nd

 

[chriscc]

Ha! Thanks Joy! Nice to know I wasn't going crazy with the open/closed stuff. AFAIK Brightlocal doesn't let me set the time of the report, so when (in the UK) I get the regular email from them, sometimes it arrives after the business is open, and sometimes when it's closed. I guess Brightlocal and all the others are going to have to (quickly!) implement an option to set the time when the report is run. (Unless they already have that feature and I missed it).
Thank you for the update

 

[chriscc]

Hey Chris, Jenny from BrightLocal here. We're looking into what this means for our rankings tools as a priority and will be sure to let you know if any platform or report updates are required. Thanks again!

Thanks Jenny! I have a report set to run weekly, but an option to also set the time of day to run it would be perfect (I am still seeing big open/closed fluctuations)!

 

[rod.philip]

Have your rankings stabilized Timur? Mine have also been all over the place this weekend, going from an average of 10 to 20+, then going up to 5, back down to 20+ etc. I checked this morning and they are at 15 for my target keyword, which is significantly lower than last week. I am hoping this is not just the new normal, and that more changes are to come.

 

[chriscc]

Hi Rod, mine too, big fluctuations continuing today (Wednesday). Especially on mobile weirdly, but that's anecdotal. Almost sure to be the core update that Colan/Joy picked up...

 

[Adam Di Frisco]

My rankings are going crazy as well for a few clients. One really interesting thing is for the keyword "water treatment", top ranking profiles always had the primary category of "water treatment supplier" or "water purification company". After the update in some locations, the top 3-5 are now all "Laboratory", which look like abandoned profiles with 2-3 reviews. It's driving me crazy!

 

[chriscc]

Oh that's interesting; I've been going through the businesses that seem to have benefited and they also all have primary categories in common, which were previously lower ranked (but more relevant than 'laboratory' in your case!). Have you experimented with changing primary category? I guess I'll leave it a bit and see if things settle down..

 

[Adam Di Frisco]

Ya definitely going to wait to see how it shakes out. I have a client meeting tomorrow though and was planning on saying if it sticks then we'll definitely want to make some major adjustments to the GBP and the site. I'll come back here if I see any big changes.

 

[chriscc]

For what it's worth, after a couple of days of wild fluctuations, my rankings seem to have stabilised roughly where they started(!)

 

[Timur]

So mine is still going crazy. The day before yesterday I fell to position 15 from the 1st, then got back to 1st, today I am at 16 position!

SEO rankings for the main city also fluctuate, I am floating between pos 2 to 9 during the day. Crazy

 

[rod.philip]

Still huge fluctuations for me as well. I'm new to SEO so I'm not sure if this is just normal or if there's something I can do differently to stabilize rankings.

Morning yesterday:

Evening that same day:

 

[chriscc]

Very similar scale of fluctuation to what I had. Sorry, that's no help to you I know. Out of interest, is the business 'open' at the time of both your tests?

 

[rod.philip]

Good point! I think the business was closed at the time, but I have seen similar fluctuations even just from the morning to the afternoon this past week.

 

[Timur]

That is crazy. I don`t see it`s coming to an end.

 

[Timur]

That was yesterday. And today we got that

 

[silverweb]

Very similar scale of fluctuation to what I had. Sorry, that's no help to you I know. Out of interest, is the business 'open' at the time of both your tests?

@chriscc You're correct. I've noticed similar occurrences with my client's keywords. They rank highly in the morning, around 8 am when his business opens, for about half an hour, and then again in the evening for another half an hour before closing.

Is this a new test by Google?