THE ‘GOOGLE DANCE’ – NOT AS ENJOYABLE AS IT SOUNDS
9 March 2011 - Digital
Ever heard of ‘doing the Google Dance’? If the answer is ‘yes’ then you will know that it is probably one of the least enjoyable dances that you will ever indulge in. If the answer is ‘no’, then you have never tried to get a website ranking on a search engine and, quite possibly, have no idea what I am talking about.
You have built your website, it looks nice, it’s functional, it works and it’s full of useful stuff. All you need now is for Google, and other such search engines, to put it at the top of their search results whenever somebody searches for any term relevant to it and, ‘hey presto’, you are a millionaire. Obviously, it isn’t quite that simple, but you get the idea.
If you are lucky, or have built a fantastic website that adheres to all of the rules and instructions you have followed from Google, then, within a few days of it going live, you may start to see it appearing for some searches related to it. Some of these may be on the first page of the Google search results and you may even find that some of the users visit your site to see what it’s all about. Everything is going exactly as you planned…
But, just as things are going along nicely, your site vanishes from the search results, comes back a day later, then vanishes again for a day, comes back a few places higher the next, then vanishes for a week or two before returning again! What on Earth is going on? This fluctuation is known as the Google Dance and most people who have launched a new website will have encountered it.
What can you do about it? Obviously you want to be in the search results permanently, not go missing every other day. Some people make the mistake of thinking it is something they have done wrong. They will tamper with their site, the code and other areas to try to get back into the search results as quickly as possible when, in fact, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with their website. It’s simply that Google has thousands of servers and it can take time for your site to appear steadily on all of them. Plus Google is frequently tweaking its search results and algorithms, all of which can lead to your website dropping out and then returning.
Obviously, if you vanish from Google for weeks and months without returning, then this is no longer a dance and there may be alternative reasons behind your exclusion. But for a lot of websites, and new ones in particular, the Google Dance is probably something you’re just going to have to endure during your website’s infancy.
The Google Dance – not as enjoyable as it sounds. But, if you are currently doing it, try not to worry about it too much.
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