Crazy that marketers don't know about this. This is a patent from Google designed to trick people trying to do SEO.
Google has this flow chart showing how it works. You make a change to your webpage, Google looks at the old rank of your page, then decides on your new rank.
But before they do that, they put in what's called a rank transition function. This rank transition function is designed to give you unpredictable fluctuations in your rankings.
It figures out what your fluctuated rank should be, publishes the wrong rank, then observes your behavior. Google explains why they have this.
They say that this patent exists to catch spammers. This observed behavior step allows Google to see if spammers freak out over the ranking fluctuations.
The spammers might do things like remove backlinks, change keyword positions. If Google sees weird behavior during this stage, they might not give yo...