Shooting up Google rankings...have you got a website or are you a website designer

[zippitippitoes]

and have you noticed a big change lately?

I'm not, (I do ppc on Google) but I know that if there are changes in the Google dance & rankings, you'll find them gone over exhaustively on \link{http://www.webmasterworld.com\this} discussion site.
You don't do site-builds by any chance do you?

thanks I'll check that out, no I have a website and I felt it wasn't as highly ranked as it should be compared with similar sites and also I couldn't understand why I was better ranked for some keywords than others ie not a true reflection of how much a customer would benefit from visiting the site and now I am in the top ten for my major keyword searches!

I presume you mean your rankings in the 'free' listings, not in the pay-per-click? Google change their ranking rationale for the former on a regular basis - it's exhausting trying to keep up...

yes the free listings

Yes, same here, Zippi, but I assumed that was because the website only went live in December, and so it had taken a few months to 'register' with the search engines.

It seems they have made some big changes to how they assess sites..something called Big Daddy so I don't know whether that's it, I find it very difficult to penetrate the nerdy speak on these computing forums..what websites do all these blokes have, sure most of them are dodgy!

they have ahd problems with sites using 'illegal' methods to get their sites in the top listings. I think they had problems with audi over it, and they've been a few changes since then. Not sure if it is related.