Google Search Result Fluctuations in March 2014 – Algorithm Shift or Manual Penalties?

Since Volume Nine tracks the search rankings for a large number of clients, we noticed a shift in March that has led to significant fluctuations in Google search results.  As of now, there has not been an official statement from Google regarding an algorithm shift, but SEO Roundtable had some interesting findings when looking at manual penalties.

Given the variance across a number of websites, the recent shifts have the makings of a potential algorithm shift, but Google has also been very active in penalizing international link networks and blog networks as of late.

Barry Schwartz of SEO Roundtable comes to the conclusion that the aggressive nature of the penalties being levied against sites that have “spammy” backlink profiles is likely the reason why certain sites are seeing large jumps in organic rankings, as other sites are pushed down, or even potentially removed from the Google search index via manual penalty.

Has your website seen a manual penalty recently, or have you seen Google ranking fluctuations in March as well?  With Google’s Penguin update and these manual link and blog network penalties, now is the time to focus your efforts on improving your backlink profile with content marketing.