No SEO position is a given. You can have a page positioned on the first page of a SERP (search engine results page) one day and see it on the second page a few days, weeks or months later. Fortunately the reverse is also possible, your pages can gain positions over the weeks, months.

SERPs are constantly evolving and this is why SEO is a regular and long-term work . Respecting the good practices of natural referencing allows to limit the volatility of its positions on search engines.

Today, we are going to present you a feature of the Semrush tool that allows you to follow these evolutions day after day.

Why are SERPs volatile?

As we mentioned, SEO positions in search results pages are unstable. There are different reasons causing these movements.

We can note two main ones:

1. Main updates of the referencing algorithm (Ex: Google Core update)
2. Deployment of a new SEO algorithm with specific rules

These are the major reasons that influence natural positions. However, it should be noted that only your positions can be volatile due to penalties or manual actions for example.

Fortunately, there are indicators like Semrush Sensor that allow you to follow a volatility score day after day to determine if you are losing or gaining positions because of an action on your part or because of a movement of the SERPs.

Semrush Sensor SERPs Volatility Score

Semrush sensor is a tool to monitor the volatility of SERPs. With its indicator, we can easily have an evaluation of the fluctuation of search engine results.

Semrush Sensor gives a daily volatility score out of 10:

• A score between 0 and 2 expresses low volatility;
• A score between 2 and 5 expresses normal volatility;
• A score between 5 and 8 expresses high volatility;
• A score between 8 and 10 expresses a very high volatility

Thanks to the evolution of this score, we can know if the positioning of our web pages is likely to undergo a change of ranking on search engines. We can also see the impact of changes and updates of search engine algorithms on SERPs.

In the variance section, we can see the difference in score from one day to the next and determine trends.

Furthermore, in the"Winners and losers" section, we have an overview of the domains followed by Sensor that have benefited or not from the volatility of SERPs. On the side, we also have the evolution by category.

Volatility score by category

Semrush Sensor doesn't just give us an overall volatility score. We can further investigate this score by looking at the volatility for each site category.

On the left side of the dashboard, we can see several categories (arts and leisure, cars and vehicles, finance, health, games, references, etc.). We can click on one of the categories in order to study the evolution of the positions on the results pages of queries in this specific area.

Thus, depending on our activity, we can know if we have suffered more or less from volatility on the SERPs.

Volatility score by country

Just like the categories, we can add a filter according to the country. Indeed, the volatility scores are not necessarily the same in France or in the United States. Thus, according to our referencing strategy, we can study for each country the global evolution of the positions on the search engines.

Volatility score by device

In addition to categories and country, we can also look at theevolution according to mobile or computer results. Indeed, it is important to know that in SEO, there are specific ranking factors for mobile, which means that the positions are not necessarily the same on computer or phone. The volatility score is therefore not necessarily the same.  

For all these filtering systems, we can make comparisons and study the impact of a strong volatility on its different websites for example.

The important thing to remember in all this is that the Semrush Sensor indicator can give you answers about a strong evolution of your positions on search engines like Google.

Following this score allows us to evaluate the impact of a Google update and to see if our web pages have benefited or not from this evolution. In any case, to limit or react to these fluctuations, we strongly advise you to always respect the SEO recommendations of Google to keep natural traffic on your website.