Losing traffic from important keywords

[Mr-AJ]

The last couple of weeks I worked hard to rank well for a certain search term and am still on third position. It's not a long tail keyword and there were some days where I made between 15 and 20 visitors through this keyword (according to G analytics). Now it doesn't show one single visitor since the last couple of days! Zero! And I still rank on third position and nothing changed.

Is this normal "search variance" or is it possible that I was ranking very well for a certain language/region and lost positions there? Any ideas how to judge that?
Or was there a guy that accidentily hit my site through this keyword and stopped now?
Seems that nobody googles during the WSOP for this keyword

[Unknown Webmaster]

You can see statistics about your rankings in local variations of Google in Google's Webmaster Tools. I don't think it is entirely accurate (at least it isn't live stats), but it does give you a decent idea about what you are ranking for and where.

Google Analytics also has a feature where you can see which country your visitors come from, which may give you an idea about whether or not you have been Uzbekistan's main authority on "keyword".

[Mr-AJ]

Ok, I analyzed it the last few days and it makes no sense at all. Visitors come from Poland, Mazedonia, Sweden, Germany, USA... pretty much everything. But there was no single visitor for the last two weeks and this is very strange in my opionion.

Are there any statistics on the variance of Google searches? Google's insights in search shows a long term variance but I'd like to see the short term variance.
If there are no statistics I guess I'll make it and keep you updated (if appreciated)

[Michael Martinez]

New sites are often given a temporary rankings boost to help them establish some visibility and attract links. The effect is not perfectly timed, so far as I know.

However, Google has recently been rebuilding its index, a process that takes several weeks. It's not unusual for new sites to achieve significant visibility during such periods and then to vanish completely, sometimes for months, because they lack sufficient value-passing inbound links.

You might think you're ranking third when, in fact, for most people you are NOT ranking third. There are several possible reasons for why that might be so. Google is not one search engine any more -- it hasn't been for years. There are many Googles, each existing in its own data center, and you cannot be sure that a site appears in the same position for Los Angeles users as for New York users, except in very special circumstances.

[Mr-AJ]

Well, I'm aware of that and recognized those differences already. But what can you do here? Asking a guy from NY where you rank for a certain keyword? Are there any practices I'm not aware of?

[Pokerboy]

Are you logged into your G account when you do the search yourself?
If your G account is connected to Analytics you can see different results when logged in.

[Mr-AJ]

Nope, that's the reason I only Google when logged out.

[Pokerboy]

Get a few people around the world to do the search and see how it comes up. It can be several things - but maybe your rankings have dropped on several datacentres - just not the one you are hitting.

[POlka]

Maybe iam stating the obvious here but you can check inside the webmaster tools under statistics -> top search queries -> location were you are ranking from diffrent counrty specific versions of google.

In case you use seo elite you can check your rankings under -> find where your site is ranked for given kexword(s) within the options of seo elite you can change the counrty specific version of google seo elite is using for the query.

[Mr-AJ]

Right, G webmasters is an option but there's no single result that fits my personal (or any of my friends) results. Some say I'm worse and some say I'm better off.
I checked it out with SEO Elite and it looks good too.