The Google Everflux is a term that was first coined, circa 2000. It goes by many names, including the Google Dance. In essence, these terms refer to the fact that Google’s search results can often change on a daily basis – even on an hourly basis.
Your website may be #3 today and #12 tomorrow, then back to #5 next week. Google tells us that this is to be expected, since they are constantly bringing more information into their databases, day after day.
The Internet is a dynamic place, always changing and receiving new content. In a reflection of that truth, Google’s search results are always changing too.
Over the last several years, Google has moved from daily updates to the information in their database, to nearly real-time updates to the information in their database.
A few bloggers have noted that new posts that they have made available have turned up in Google’s search results in as little as 7 minutes, from the time the post was made public.
As new information becomes available, Google tends to give some preference to the new information over existing information. From the standpoint of Google, this is a good practice.
Take for example the death of Michael Jackson. When the news started hitting the Internet, users rushed to the search engines to verify the news. As stories of the death of the King Of Pop began to flood the Internet, the standard search results for “Michael Jackason” should naturally be diminished against Michael Jackson’s home page. In the days following his death, his own website was not what people were looking to find. Instead, they were looking to find out the scoop on what really happened to him.
As a result, MichaelJackson.com had to take a backseat to the stories about his death, in the search results.
Of course, now that he has been dead for some time, the natural order of things can return. MichaelJackson.com and Jackson’s Wikipedia page have regained their preeminent status at the top of Google’s search rankings.
This is the reason why most new information on the Internet can jump to the front of Google’s search results. Regardless of whether a listing is coming from a “known news source” or not, new pages that Google archives tend to get an extra boost for a couple weeks, while the page is a new page on the Internet.
Google recommends that most fluxuation in its search results should be temporary and not be observed to make major swings.
For most of us, the Google Everflux is nothing that we should worry about. The only time one should really get concerned about the Everflux is when a ranking drops, and stays gone for more than a couple weeks. The long-term disappearance of a page from Google’s search results for an extended amount of time could signal another problem that needs to be understood and repaired.