The Google Dance is not to be confused with the Google Honeymoon Period which refers to new sites and new pages enjoying top rankings shortly or immediately after being published. In this article we’re going to identify what exactly the Google Dance is and what the major occurrences for it are.

What is the Google Dance?

An example of the Google Dance would be unexplained but wild jumps your page sees in the SERPs. You might have enjoyed a number 3 ranking for a month and then suddenly you see your page drop to page 10, then back to page one, then down to page two, and so on.

Eventually the page will generally settle into its final and deserved spot wherever that is, but in the mean time you might see it jump around as Google shuffles. There are a few causes which will explain the effects of the Google Dance.

Freshness – Fresh content is rewarded by Google. This is because the thought process is that newer content is more up to date and will therefore deliver a more relevant search result to whomever is searching for that keyword phrase which triggered it.

Backlink Changes – Your backlinks are one of the most influential Google ranking factors which affect your ranking. One of the most common explanations for your rankings fluctuations relates to your backlinks.

You could have received a new backlink to your site which has a lot of influence to improve your rankings. Conversely you may have lost an influential backlink which can account for the drop off. Somewhere in between, you may have also had an influential backlink drop into the archives of the site it’s come from, so the article on their site which has a link to your page may have initially been on their home page but over time it dropped off into the archives, accounting for the drop off in influence from a link from their home page to a link from deeper in their site.

Algorithmic Updates – Just like earthquakes all across the globe, there are many largely unnoticeable small updates and changes to the Google algorithm each year but only a handful of large ones which have real palpable consequences on the SERPs. If your page is jumping around, you may see the same jumps in other pages for the same keyword moving in and out of the top 10.

Whatever the cause, if you’re a victim of the Google Dance there’s generally not much you can do besides building good links and waiting it out. Eventually your site will settle where it’s truly meant to be in the SERPs.