Originally Posted by Pleasurepays

what changes more than anything is competition for those phrases in addition to how google returns search results based on a very fluid environment. people tend to look at search results as if it should be some sort of static concept, which its not.

every link online, linking to another page has a certain value to pass to the page it links to... that value depends entirely on the value of the links pointing to that page. these are things that change by the second and ripple out to affect almost everyone who isn't fighting aggressively to put themselves in a position where they are less impacted by what others are doing. you can't say "i was number one for "hamster turd recipes" and then reason that "google must have changed something" when you slip to number 10 or 20... without taking a very hard look at the competition and what they are doing and how they beat you.