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Of course, I am particularly unimpressed because they are all higher up than my site, which is at page 4!(despite being highly relevant, optimized for that particular keyword phrase and well-linked).
I don't know what is going on but my site was on page 1 to begin with but then it kept slipping. I paid for submission because I thought it must be slipping because it wasn't getting refreshed, but it slipped further!
I wrote to Teoma twice about this but they never replied. I am NOT impressed with this company and I will not be re-subscribing unless things improve - customer service and algorithm.
e.g. You have a site on widget manufacture
with links from a software company at PR8 you will do well with optimised pages for Title and description etc in Google.
in Teoma this link will probably be of little value - if not ignored completely
I'm not sure what you are saying:
A widget site with links from a highly-ranked software company will do well on Google for software keywords if it has title and description optimized for software?
I understand that with Teoma, sites linked to 'communities' of websites similar to their own do well? Well, my site should still do well with that algorithm.
Or maybe I am misunderstanding something?
Teoma, uses a community based theme-site to site linking algo, in which site's that have relevant content to highly ranked related site's, are valued as part of a community. Hence will be attributed by said community (worked out by teoma's algo) to be of x-value to the community, and rank is given, the more high ranking on topic related in's-out's-cross links the better.
Hence link farms, completely unrelated site's will probably hurt your rank for the real intent of the site, with teoma.
As most will know, google's algo has a flaw, regarding very high value incoming links, they could be about anything but your site's content, however still play an extremely important role in the PR of the site.
Teoma, has maybe tracked this and watched google evolve (i'm guessing), and may have seen this problem years ago when the original engine was being developed at Rutger Uni. Combating it by using a sort of mind map, in which a site for a certain amount of key terms, means that it is in a community with other site's with the same, if not similar key terms. Hence the site that has the most links from the related resources in that community, will assuming that the site, satisfies the other criteria's hit the top.
If one can identify the community, that a site will be denoted by teoma, as belonging too, then one can theme the site to be a pivotal point of the community and become its centre.
Namniboose,
watch anything spammy with Teoma, their spam detectors are ament to be on at full wack, sniffing for anything that looks, doggy. Best way to view it is like trying to take narcotics, through a line of highly trained police dogs > don't do it.
Pay-for-Inclusion, according to Ask Jeeves, will not help ranking, its just a sure fire way of getting in the crawl pattern, within a certain amount of time, don't mean you can't go up and down like a yo-yo.
The computer company in question hosts a lot of Maui sites, so it is obviously part of the 'community of sites' for 'maui vacation rentals' because of how it is linked.
It used to be on page 1 until I pointed it out to Teoma - it's still ranked above my site, however!
There's no mention of 'maui' or 'vacation rentals' in the title or description so, I maintain, Teoma's algorithm is flawed if it doesn't take into account title and description at all.
try content, theme structure, related in-out-cross links, and about another 100+ possible factors, and title and description will be one of the multitude of factors that are addressed by teoma's algo.
Hence they just are'nt that important if the site's other factors are converging upon the keyterms.
the best of both worlds, is to have all possible factors, working towards the keyterms.
hope this clears it up for you a little.
If the SERP shows irrelevant sites then the algo is flawed.
(that Ok, Namniboose?:))
All the rest of the discussion is helpful information explaining exactly how the flaw has interfered in this case.
Any web design or service industry site that has built a link popularity campaign using its customer base will trigger this flaw if their customer base has a specific theme, in this case regional.
I think the algo needs adjusting to pay more attention to on site factors.
I just hope they can muscle the resources to expand the db about 10 fold.
Unlikely, when they have limited themselves so heavily by trying to sell inclusion, when inclusion is actually more vital to them than to anyone paying for a listing.
If Google had charged PFI they would never have gotten so big (and so good) and I think the new owners of Teoma should have tempered their greed to realise that.
Ammon Johns