Fluctuations in your rankings can be panic-inducing. Watching your website drop in Google can seem alarming, as one small shift can prompt a noticeable difference in site traffic.
But keep your cool. It happens to everyone.
Search engine ranking fluctuations are quite common.
In fact, it would be rare to see the top five rankings of a keyword search stay exactly the same over the course of several months.
If you monitor your rankings monthly, you may never notice a change. If you were to do it daily, you might see something like this: Number four, number five, number four, number three, and so on.
Monitoring rankings over a longer period provides a realistic snapshot of a website’s SEO performance. If over a few months, there has been a consistent drop in rankings then, yes, adjustments may be required.
Another factor to consider is personalised search.
Results can be skewed for a number of reasons. One being proximity. Results on your work computer can differ from results shown on your computer at home (due to location and past search behaviours).
So if you see the occasional fluctuation in your rankings, there’s no need to panic. This is a natural evolution of Google’s constantly shifting algorithm.