when I search for Tri-River Capital it shows up as number 42 in the listing, why?

Hello.

When I did a search for the phrase, "Tri-River Capital" (using
quotation marks), the site actually is in the top 10 search results.
That's not bad.
See: 
Google search: "Tri-River Capital"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&client=googlet&q=%22Tri-River+Capital%22&btnG=Google+Search

If you do a search without the quotation marks, the site will be less
likely to appear as a top result. Unfortunately, "tri," "river" and
"capital" are all quite common words and appear on a large number of
web pages, so to make sure that your search results are about
"Tri-River Capital" specifically, it's a good idea to use quotation
marks to limit your results to that exact phrase. See "The Basics of
Google Search," hosted by Google.com for more information:
://www.google.com/help/basics.html

For more information about how Google ranks web pages, see:

How does Google rank pages?
://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html

Google Technology: PageRank Explained
://www.google.com/technology/index.html

Finally, I should mention that Google Answers Researchers are not
Google employees and can not affect or improve how your web site shows
up in rankings done by the Google search engine. However, many web
sites offer suggestions and strategies for improving your site's
rankings on Google. Webmasterworld.com has many discussion on this
topic. For example, see: "Successful Site in 12 Months with Google
Alone," on Webmasterworld.com
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

Also see: "Google Articles" on webworkshop.net
http://webworkshop.net/google_articles.html

search strategy: 
"tri river capital"
google, pagerank, etc

I hope this helps. If anything is unclear, please use the "request
clarification" feature. Thanks and good luck with your site.

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Request for Answer Clarification by milt1-ga on 03 Mar 2003 16:14 PST

Good evening. Thank you for your help. Let me try my question one more
time. Your answer may not change. I understand that. If you search for
tri- river capital on MSN, it is the first name that appears. That
makes sense. Tri-river capital is the only tri-river capital. On
Google there are many names that appear first because they incorporate
one of the three words in their name or article. Many of the names
that appear before Tri-river capital have very dated information to
boot! Tri-river capital's information is current as are its two 2003
pres releases! None of this makes any practical sense to me. Why
should Tri-River Habitat appear #1 when you search for tri-river
capital (which now appears 46)? Thank you in advance. Have a great
evening.

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Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 03 Mar 2003 17:15 PST

Hi.

I see your point and can definitely understand your frustration.

The situation stems from the fact that Google's rankings depend very
much on the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to your
web site.

"Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A,
for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes,
or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the
vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more
heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'"
://www.google.com/technology/index.html 

Let's take a look at why "Tri River Habitat" might outrank your site.

One of their web pages contained the words, "tri," "river" and
"capital"
See the page cached by Google
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:u5ay28y5pnEC:www.southboston.com/habitat/history.html+tri+river+capital&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

This page probably has a higher rank because it's hosted by
southboston.com.

Google is aware of 34 other pages that link to southboston.com 
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=link%3Awww.southboston.com%2F&btnG=Google+Search

Unfortunately, Google is aware of 0 pages that link to
tri-rivercapital.com
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=link%3Awww.tri-rivercapital.com%2F&btnG=Google+Search

Without any other web sites linking to your web site, your PageRank is
not going to be high. Your site is, unfortunately, considered less
"important" than southboston.com.

Now, how can you remedy this?  The key is to increase the number of
other sites on the web that link to your site. You need to do a little
promotion. Get your name out there more. Ask webmasters of other sites
to place links to your site on their sites.

Here are some tips from "How To Improve Your Link Popularity With
Internal, Incoming & Outgoing Links" on stickysauce.com:
"i. Find Sites That Link To Your Competition
ii. Find Link Partners In Web Directories
iii. Find Sites That Accept Site Submissions"
http://www.stickysauce.com/articles/searchenginetips/links.htm

For some other ideas, see:
"How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google"
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/google.shtml

"Link Popularity: How to Check it and How to Improve it!"
http://www.websitemanagementservices.com/tutorials/tutorial_link_popularity.shtml

Again, I understand your frustration. By promoting links to your site,
though, you should be able to improve your ranking. I hope this helps.
Good luck!