MHes - 6:31 am on Mar 14, 2007 (gmt 0)

Miamacs

Nice post and I've been thinking about what you said for a few days.

If I'm reading you right, you suggest conflicting themes are a big problem, especially if one of them has no supporting links etc. I don't think conflicting themes is a problem. A page could have several high N values for unrelated themes and be perfectly legitimate. An N value is only referred to if one of the themes is seen in a search phrase. If so, the supporting links need to be seen for that N value phrase for the page to rank. If the search phrase has two potential N related phrases it could look up 2 N values and want to see links for both.... but this is where the system could easily break down. A page about dolphins and their ability to play chess may have high N values for the chess theme and animal theme, but the link to the page may be just 'Dolphin'. Are you saying that this page won't rank? That would be a bit harsh and I think there would be so many examples of pages discussing unrelated themes that the 950 would have had a far bigger impact if this was the case. However, there is a neat solution to this... If ANY N value triggered by a search phrase is redeemed, the page ranks as normal. Therefore a page about Blue cheese that also has Blue hotels mentioned won't rank for the search "blue hotels" but will for "blue cheese" because the blue cheese theme is redeemed by links and the blue hotel theme isn't. BUT, a search for "blue cheese and blue hotels" will also be redeemed because of the blue cheese N value being redeemed.

Thus I think conflicting themes is not an issue. The N value for a theme is taken in isolation as per the search phrase.