Robert_Charlton - 6:56 am on Jun 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

aspdesigner - Thanks for the clarification. I haven't run across any examples of pages with numerous repetitions ranking, which is why I'm asking about them.

Though in our discussion in the Repeating History thread I noted that I was seeing pages lacking search terms in body copy, I should add that I myself wasn't seeing any predominance of pages that were missing search terms in titles.

Those pages that I am seeing rank without the full three words of a three-word search in the title in competitive searches are generally pages that would also rank for the core two words of the three word phrase. As an example of a three-word search that doesn't exclude title terms, try a search for the title you suggested, which... contrary to general forum rules about specifics... I'll let stand as an example.

I'm sure we're talking about different kinds of pages here, and I think that mantucket's phrase "inventory pages" may be hitting the nail on the head...

Perhaps the new mayday rules only apply to pages that get classified as 'inventory' pages?

I've called this "thin content", and, along with many others, I've been warning against this kind of page for quite some time now. Google's been warning against it too. This shouldn't be coming as a surprise.

I agree that Google has turned the "knobs" way too far. In many searches, where the results are bad, they're very, very bad. I don't think it's intentional, and I don't think it helps Google to be returning pages as bad as they're returning.

As to why the apparent keyword stuffing might be working right now... algos tend to grasp blindly when there's very little that matches the criteria they're searching for, so MayDay could be cutting so deeply when looking for co-occurring content that it's not leaving much of anything, and then deciding that those pages with multiple repetitions... spam... is better than nothing. Just conjecture that this might be what you're seeing.

PS: I haven't been able to get the video to play... too many folks here logging on at once. ;)