Hi topslr ~
I experienced the same phenomenon of searching for the term "Temecula
Real Estate" (with and without the quotation marks) once - and only
once. After that, I could not reproduce the situation and came up with
a PageRank of 3.
Since Google has ten data centers to which you can be seamlessly
passed off for the purpose of load balancing, I was curious enough to
test each of the data centers specifically. The results were identical
and are pasted below:
Santa Clara - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-ex.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Herndon, VA - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-va.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
San Jose - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-sj.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Washington - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-dc.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
USA - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-fi.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Sterling, VA - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-ab.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Santa Clara - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-in.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Zurich - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-zu.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Palo Alto - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-cw.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Dublin - 5th listing - PR3 when clicked on Google results link
- http://www-gv.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=temecula+real+estate
Since the data centers all return the same information, I can only
guess that it may be a glitch in the feed to the Google Toolbar or in
the Toolbar itself.
We're not the only one noticing some inconsistencies and reporting on
this happening. A check on Webmaster World's Discussions on the Google
Toolbar report the same thing:
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum80/455.htm
===================
Links to your site
===================
You say you have "approximately 900 links to your site", yet a check
using the link:tool returns 41 links.
A check for links on alltheweb.com shows 150 links:
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Awww.TemeculaLandandEstates.com+-site%3Atemeculalandandestates.com&c=web&cs=iso-8859-1&co=1&no=off&l=any
Recent technical or search engine newsletters have reported major
changes happening in search engines, especially the 'big three'
(Google, Yahoo! and MSN).
An example of the recent spate of articles can be found on
Internet.com's report, "Search Engine Throne Up for Grabs"
- http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/3065921
Search engines consider it their responsibility to deliver relevant
sites for any given search term. In the past, some unscrupulous
webmasters and self-proclaimed search engine optimizers have found
ways to stack the deck in their favor, whether or not the site
actually delivered what the searcher was looking for.
But the times are changing. Google has been warning about using
linking schemes to artificially raise a page rank, explaining they may
go so far as to ban a site:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or
"bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected
adversely by those links." (Google's Quality Guidelines - Basic
principles)
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
and "setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search
engines may result in permanent removal from our index." (from
Google's "Other reasons your site may not be listed")
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html
Many of those links to your site have a "greyed out" PageRank, which
is a sign they've been penalized.
The article cited above (and similar articles) draws a valid
conclusion the competition is going to be to deliver RELEVANT
material. While link popularity may be a key part of that algorithm,
if those links are link farms, free for all links and other linking
schemes which bear no relevance to a site, there is the very real
danger they'll be dropped from indexing.
What worked up to a short time ago is changing. From the scores of
complaints entered in Webmaster World's forums, it appears that sites
which previously had a high placement (but no relevance) are
disappearing entirely from Google's index. You may want to take the
time to read through the discussion threads and see what has been
happening.
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/
There are wise webmasters who realize that delivering relevant
material and avoiding those games is what seems to give them staying
power.
This is why I suggested that you might be concerned about the sites
linking to yours, especially those who are perceived to be no more
than a linking scheme. The Googlebot crawl has become a continuing
process, and it looks like every effort is being made to deliver
relevant content.
========
Summary
========
The PageRank anomaly you noticed and I saw only once seems to be just
that - an anomaly, and seems to be related more to some glitch in the
Toolbar than from any of the results from Google's data centers.
So far as your position for the search term "Temecula Real Estate",
5th place seems to be pretty good positioning. You'll want to make
sure you can stay there.
============
Suggestions
============
Google's own Guidelines and Webmaster Information contains a great
deal of information to help you gte listed in their index. Webmaster
World is another source of good information on what's happening and
how it may affect your own situation.
Another good source of information is Danny Sullivan's "Search Engine
Watch",
- http://www.searchenginewatch.com
If you're concerned about search engine placement, these are excellent
places to start.
Search Terms
=============
The search terms were all in relation to your own site, and the search
term you mentioned, "Temecula Real Estate". The answer was formulated
from personal information gathered and bookmarks used in my regular
course of work.
Best regards,
Serenata |
Clarification of Answer by
serenata-ga
on
27 Aug 2003 22:44 PDT
Hello again Topslr ~
Remember, Google Answers Researchers are independent contractors and
not employees of Google. We have no "insider information" on Google's
search engine results placement which is based on Google's
carefully-guarded algorithm.
Google recommends you "[p]eriodically review Google's webmaster
section for more information," and keeping up with other reliable
sources of information, such as Webmaster World, may help you keep
abreast of the latest changes.
Bear in mind that all search engines, and Google in particular, work
hard to deliver the most relevant search results, and they constantly
change their algorithms to do just that. Google explains changes in
its "Changes from one index to the next", here:
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B1
and "... Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching
techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your
search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a
page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content
of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your
query."
- ://www.google.com/technology/index.html
Interestingly, when I clicked on your site linking from search results
of the term "Temecula real estate" (without the quotation marks), your
site's page rank was greyed out or returned as 0/10 - and you were
listed either 5th or 6th, depending on which Google data center I
happened to hit. So there have been some changes to the index since my
original answer.
There have also been changes noted in Google's indexing according to
discussions on Webmaster World, and I suspect this may have an effect
on your site as well.
Other than the information Google presents, I really cannot tell you
why you are listed 5th or 6th on the search engine results - that's a
part of Google's algorithm, and they're not telling anyone.
Best Regards,
Serenata
|
Clarification of Answer by
serenata-ga
on
28 Aug 2003 19:38 PDT
Hi again topslr ~
Your question appears because Google does include its own pages among
the results it produces.
While we don't know the algorithms nor the weight given for key word
and/or term density (the number of times a particular term appears in
relation to the rest of a page's content), by the time you add up the
number of times the term "Temecula real estate" is used on this page,
that's a pretty respectable word density.
Try changing the term around to "real estate Temecula" and it appears
that "Temecula" has greater weight than either the words "real" or
"estate" or the two words together "real estate". I say "appears",
because I only used that search and did not try other combinations.
Google also returns blogs and sometimes other directory information in
its search engine results.
There's an analyzer for keyword density if you'd like to check here:
- http://www.keyworddensity.com/
Just a reminder that Google says "Google goes far beyond the number of
times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's
content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if
it's a good match for your query." (See Google's "PageRank Explained")
- ://www.google.com/technology/index.html
They say they "go beyond", which would imply there is still some
weight given, but that it is not the most important determinant.
And if you have followed the links given to outside sources, you will
notice that PageRank currently seems to be unstable (or "all over the
place"), and since there has been no "official" explanation given, one
could surmise that we're in the middle of some changes and need to
wait until things stabilize before we can get a reasonable (or
reliable) PageRank.
I'd be concerned if I were the only one this was happening to;
however, when others notice the same thing, it would indicate a
system-wide phenomenon and would wait to see how things look once they
"settle in".
Thanks again for the opportunity to be of help,
Serenata
|
