MHes - 10:29 am on Feb 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

There's an assumption that 'missing pages' or ones sent to the 950+ have been totally rejected in googles eyes for 'relevancy'. I think this may not always be the case and those pages in some circumstances have played an important part in helping another page rank position top. There are too many reports saying that their page was totally relevant but google chose to rank a different page. So I think this assumption that google has failed to appreciate the relevancy of a page by putting it 950+ needs to be re addressed. Google may have been very impressed by the page but it was not deemed a good page to send the visitor for reasons beyond the pages relevancy to the search query. It could be argued that the fact that the page was subjected to 950 was because it was a candidate for a top ranking.... so close but so far.

Pages may go 950+ for several positive reasons as well as negative ones:

1) They have been put into the potential 'spam index' and no other page within their cluster has shown sufficient 'predictive phrases' to support them. Nothing wrong with the page itself, but with the pages around it. Hence, that page could rank top for another search phrase that does have the right fit of pages around it.
2) They are a poor landing page for a visitor. Predictive phrases were found in the cluster of pages but this page does not 'navigate' well within the cluster. Therefore a visitor would not be able to navigate between the pages that google saw as being supportive.

In a lateral way of thinking, lets suppose a spider is a person who cannot speak English. They are looking for documents with the words 'widget' and 'blue'. They find 4 documents in one filing cabinet (the website) with these words on. The spider takes copies of the 4 documents as potential pages for ranking and goes to its desk. The spider also knows the word 'auto mechanical' is an associated phrase and this also appears on one of the pages. This page is looking good lets call it page A. Then the spider notices the phrase 'auto mechanical' is also on another page (page B) but only mentioned once and this links to page A. It can only choose two pages, but page C is also looking good and has the words 'widget' and 'blue' all over it. So although page A is looking the best on a 'page basis', page B is the best from a navigation basis within the cluster. It therefore chooses page B and C, because a user can go to page A from B and will see page C in the serps as an indent. It thus covers maximum ground with these two pages and ends up throwing the apparently best page into the bin. In this example, page B was chosen because page A was best and the 'predictive phrase' supported the link between the two pages. Page D was totally rejected because there was no direct link from any other page in the cluster.

So, the best page can be put into the bin ( or 950+).... but it is still the best 'on page' match and valued as such by Google. If page B had not linked to page A, then all four pages would have been relevant in isolation. This is not a helpful scenario for the user and brings into doubt the overall 'theme' of the collection of pages. The rule may be, if the webmaster has made no connection between the pages, then there is no connection between the pages for this search query.... they all go 950+. The important bit may also be how the pages link together. Page A may have linked to all the pages via a navigation template or via links with unrelated words. This may cause the link to be ignored for a specific search phrase.

Now add a further 100 factors into the analysis of each page and find the exceptions to the rule!