Different Google results each hour

Hello! I get a strange thing with google, where I see different results every 2-3 hours on phrase 'some service + New York", Is that normal? Because my customer don’t want to pay because he doesn’t see his webpage in TOP10, where every 2-3 hours he is there

The main thing you’ve got to understand is that there is no such thing as an absolute position for any given site within the search results. It would be unusual to see a big fluctuation every 2 - 3 hours, but nevertheless there are likely to be at least minor differences in rankings every time you check. More importantly, the results that you see are unlikely to be the same as those that the client sees. Nowadays, search results are highly targeted and personalised. You simply can’t say that “my site ranks at no. 5 for keyword XYZ”. It doesn’t mean a thing, because every search - and every searcher - is different.

You say your client doesn’t want to pay. That suggests that you have agreed to some sort of no-fix-no-fee deal with him - in other words, you agreed to charge a fee only if the site reaches a certain position. If so, that would be folly - for the reasons mentioned above.

The best thing you can do is to try to negotiate a new deal with him, whereby you charge a fee based on some objective criterion. One such criterion would be the rankings shown in Google Webmaster Tools. The figures you see there are average rankings for each page in the site, based on actual searches that people are doing within a given period. The rankings themselves are fairly meaningless, but at least they show a general trend, and serve as an objective measure of the site’s SEO performance.

But a much better strategy would have been for you to explain to the client at the outset that, when it comes to SEO, it is impossible to give any guarantees as to results. Tell him that you will use your best endeavours to improve the performance of the site, and that your fee will be either a fixed amount or an hourly rate, regardless of the outcome. But of course it’s too late for that now.

Mike

I remember once seeing a display of search results from 21 different Google servers. There were always a minimum of two different arrangements of the results as the servers were gradually updating to the latest results.

It is quite possible to reload a results page and pick up results from a different server that shows a different order and then reload again and get the original results back all within a minute or two.

This is quite common with google. we will be getting results from different servers …so each time it is going to take data from different servers…

It is normal for google to fluctuate differnet results even daily. You also might be hitting different data centers which could have different results as well.

Thanks everyone

The OP hasn’t returned to this topic and there is little sense in repeating what can be found in All You Need To Know About SEO

This topic is now closed. New replies are no longer allowed.