Something happened to changed everything. Between 3:40am Monday 27th July and 11:40 Tuesday 28th July, something apparently impossible happened.
Google claims that all their rankings are calculated algorithmically and while there have been claims by SEOs that Google occasionally adjust SERPs manually, Google have constantly denied these claims.
The graph above below shows Vodaphone.co.uk appearing from nowhere in position 3, climbing as high as 2 during the night. Vodaphone.co.uk is a misspelling of Vodafone.co.uk, with no algorithmic right to be anywhere near the top 500, certainly not position #2 for a query like “Mobile Phones”.
This was spotted on the morning of Monday 28th July by a member of our International Account Management team. We had been monitoring this update now for a whole month, and by now nothing would surprise us, however this made no sense (see below)
Our SEO team agreed that this was a ranking impossibility and made no sense whatsoever. There was no 301 trickery and no major backlink footprint:
* http://www.vodaphone.co.uk (190 backlinks)
* http://online.vodafone.co.uk (1,810 backlinks)
* Sitting on a domain http://www.vodafone.co.uk (69,945 backlinks)
And sure enough it was replaced by the correct site (online.vodafone.co.uk) around about noon later that day.
Could this be human error on the part of a search quality engineer? After all both these sites look pretty similar... Could this be a user behavioural consideration on the part of Google? Possibly, although why would Google favour type-in (possibly) in this way, sure that would favour commonly misspelt domains, impacting quality results.
At any rate, after seeing this I started to feel that Matt’s comments made more sense. Perhaps this wasn’t an update, at least in the traditional sense. Given that this impacted such a small number of queries, it would be feasible (at the very least) for this entire update to be handled manually.
The Million Dollar Question:
Q: If the rankings were manually adjusted, what’s the way forward for SEO?
A: While some sites appear to have been given a ranking boost we know that they are not held in absolute position, the boost appears to be relative to the previous position, meaning that a manually boosted site can be displaced by solid SEO activity.
Note: We generally use this data set to analyse precisely what component factors make a successful campaign run optimally, both in terms of cost and time, understanding the what signals Google is looking for enables us to overcome almost any kind of ranking correction.
Food for thought
I'd urge you take this evidence and take into account Matt Cutts' comments on this subject,
• Perhaps this wasn't an update as Mr Cutts himself suggested?
• Could such a small amount of changes be performed manually?
• How else could Google not only pin-point with such precision the handful of big brands that deserved a boost, but also boost them each appropriately?
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