Search Metrics takes a look each year at who fell in the rankings and who saw their website rise on Google. In addition to just looking at winners and losers they look into why some sites succeeded while other sites took a dip. If you are interested in SEO the article is very much worth reading to see their analysis and what affects ranking trends both short and long term.
From the article:
As another year in SEO ends, it’s time to take a look back at the rising and the falling stars in SEO Visibility for 2014, and most importantly, why the rankings changed.
First, there is much more quality to be found in the search results, no doubt due to the effects of Panda, Penguin & more. Big brands are among the Winners for 2014, but some websites on the list have also lost visibility for some features. The “Losers list” also features information aggregators, gaming and price comparison sites.
Our primary concern is to analyze long-term trends in the average SEO Visibility development of sites, and to achieve this, we decided to neglect short-term fluctuations. The result of this is that even some Winning sites could be subject to a downward trend, but are nonetheless considered Winners (the counter example is the ‘Losing’ site retailmenot.com).
Top 5 Falling Stars
| Domain | Loss in % | Category |
| guardian.co.uk | -100 | *Redirected |
| mayoclinic.com | -97 | *Redirected |
| elyrics.net | -92 | Enc/Dict/Lyrics |
| patch.com | -72 | Web Portal |
| lyricsmode.com | -60 | Enc/Dict/Lyrics |
Top 5 Rising Stars
| Domain | Gain in % | Category |
| mayoclinic.org | 2.037 | Med |
| instagram.com | 393 | Social/Portal |
| healthline.com | 223 | Med |
| glassdoor.com | 211 | Price/Classif |
| newyorker.com | 200 | News/Video |
Check out Search Metrics for the full list of Rising and Falling Stars here