OK, so I tried to come up with an interesting name for a phenomenon I’ve seen quite a few times now.
The backlink bungy effect is my term when your (or your competitors) search engine rankings get a huge boost and then come bouncing right back soon after.
So what is the cause for this effect?
Well, I first have to mention that search engines can be a law unto themselves and drastically affect your rankings without you touching your website or doing any off-site SEO.
This is most commonly seen in the so called Google Dance, where your site (particularly if it is new) can dance up and down in the Google rankings until it more or less settles down.
Backlink Bungy Effect Causes
The Backlink Bungy Effect is a direct result of two factors:
1. A particular type of blog comment.
2. The timing of search engines.
Blog Comments On Multiple Pages
One of the most common ways to get a big boost (albeit temporary) in rankings is by placing a comment on a blog that has the “recent comments” widget enabled on the sidebar.
What this effectively means is that if you make one blog comment, it will appear on every single page on the blog. For some blogs that can run into hundreds of pages.
Even better is when the home page has a good PR, so you get a double whammy from the one comment.
Of course, the effectiveness of the blog comment depends on three factors:
1. Infrequent comments. Typically, the list of recent comments in the sidebar is usually limited to the last five or ten comments. If the blog is very active and there are a lot of comments being made, then your comment will quickly fall off the list.
2. While a nofollow link is still counted, a dofollow link is going to have a greater impact.
3. The other critical factor is timing of when a search engine indexes the blog. If it happens to index the site while your comment is still in the recent comments list, then you’ll get the backlink boost, otherwise there’s no real change.
Don’t Despair
It can sometimes be very perplexing and frustrating when you see your site go up and then right back down again in the rankings, or seeing a competitor shoot above you for no apparent reason.
If you find that happening, it pays to check if you have fallen victim to the Backlink Bungy Effect.
Cool name!
There’s also the bungy effect that goes the other way around: Where your site drops dramaticall in the SERP, only to re-appear a few days later (usually in a higher position).
I’ve often seen this happen when a site gets some new, high-PR links in a relatively short time.
Thanks for your feedback Shane.
That’s certainly my experience with new high PR links. Usually takes around a week for the site/page to bounce back up (generally in a higher position).
does it have any effect on the performance of a certain website??
Not really sure what you are asking. Links won’t affect the performance of a website, just its rankings.
Getting your website to stabilize always seems like a sort of let down when you put so much effort into website promotion, only to find that it doesn’t settle very well in search engine results. This is especially irritating when you see your page rank very highly on search engines, only to plummet in a few days or weeks. While I don’t formally run a website or business, I do host my music on various websites like Myspace and Bandcamp; and as an artist it is nice to see my pages rank highly, but equally irritating when they drop and I can hardly find them on occasion via search engines. I think one thing to really point out is the need to persist and not give up with promotion, as with a lot of time and effort you can get your website to the top; and keep it there.
Will this Google Dance cease to exist after Panda 3.3 updates? Dont know if there is a relation but worth observing? What do you think?
No real changes since the Panda updates in regarding to Google Dances.
I experienced a heavy set back in my website’s rankings (from page 1 it just vanished for good) after Penguin but slowly the situation is improving with only one page (out of 20) having made it to page 3 now. I did not buy links or do any other so-called illegitimate thing to suffer like this but have been building links slowly and steadily. Not sure why this happened. Anyway, this is a good post as always. Thanks Peter.
Cheers,
Rema.
Hi Rema.
Unfortunately Penguin hit a lot of legitimate sites. They were part of the collateral damage.
Cheers
Peter