Google rankings drop

[lrobertson]

Has anyone else noticed a drop in rankings on Google? I am not sure if I am being too paranoid about Google but I have noticed a few sites which were ranking very well on specific terms seemed to have dropped to page 4 or 5. I know Google has added new pages recently so could this be the cause? Has anyone else had this experience?

[scisoft]

Recently one of may pages droped from No2 to No70. This page contained many repeats of the exact keyword phrase. I am thinking that this is due to some minor adjustement in the Google algo, penalising over-optimised pages.

[hawkwind dave]

I've had a couple of sites drop from page 1 to 50.
And I too am starting the think "are thay over optimised?"

What do other seo's think?
How many times should my keywords + combinations be repeated on each page? 10-20? 30-50? 5-10?

Sites above mine dont seem to mention major keywords as much as I do, yet they're ahaed of me. Also, I don't mention the keywords on a SPAM level. Surely my sites should appear more relevent as the subjects are refered to more frequently.

[Mel]

I have seen only some minor drops ( 1 to 2, or 2 to 3) in the past couple of days and on some sites increases of several ranking positions which seems like normal activity to me.

Hawkwind, depends on how big your page is but I seldom seem to get more than four or five repeats of a keyword phrase on a page, any more just doesn't seem to read well. If you assume that the average page is 350 words and the key phrases are three words then thats about a 4% density.

[onemagicalday]

I have noticed a lot of movement. Two sites made it through Florida and Austin without much movement at all. Last week (March 15-19,'04) rankings dropped to pages 5 and 6 for both sites. I've monitored everyday since the 18th and nothing's gained any ranking.

What is Google doing right now? Could this be because of over-optimization?

[atimmins]

I just ran one of my most stable sites through a rankings check. It's lost almost every Top 30 SERP from Google. Only one phrase remaining, and this site is by no means over optimized.

As much as I dislike using Yahoo personally, it is at times like this that I'm glad they are the #1 site on the net. My clients site is index there on page one for just about any phrase this client could hope for.

Lately I've even noticed my own personal sites getting more traffic from Yahoo than Google with no drop on the SERP's. Odd trend all of a sudden, I have never noticed that before!

[onemagicalday]

I would have to agree that the one site that took the biggest hit (it has dropped out of the first 90 for all keywords) is anything but over optimized. I can understand movement, but dropping off the face of Google for all keywords?

An interesting point to note is that there is another URL that does a serverside rediret to this main site. This URL is ranking for two keywords on Google. You would think that if it were a site problem, the secondary URL would face the same drop. However, the secondary URL never had the same good ranking that the main site used to have. It still just ranked for these same two keywords.

Interesting.