Turning Japanese

japanese sites too common in top ten

[rayjam]

I can't help noticing more and more non uk language sites creeping into the top ten listings on AV. My first thought was well maybe this gives us an idea of just how much weight a simple english keyword in the title can bring since 99% of the rest of the page is unreadable (without a language character download)

[Machiavelli]

It is interesting this, because it may be that these Japanese sites are the most relevant to the query. My reason is this - it is difficult necessarily to say that the word is strictly an English word.

Looking at English itself, we can leave aside that it mostly comprises corruptions of words from German, Scandinavian, Dutch, French and Latin et al., and realise that it contains many words from other languages in an uncorrupted form. Thus, we wouldn't expect a search for "Voyage" only to return French sites, nor "Gold" only to return German sites.

However, some of the oriental languages go further in uncorrupting words by not transliterating as we do - for we spell 'karaoke' in that way, and not with Japanese characters. It is this uncorruption which gives the appearance that the word belongs more to English than Japanese.

[tedster]

One of my favorite Japanese words is "honcho". It gained wide American usage following WWII.

Lots of Japanese sites returned on AV, (also on Google) for that one.

[rayjam]

I can appreciate their being cause to consider these sites but in the top ten! amongst sites which seem to be trying hard to get there. Is this a mistake on AV's part but does it in some way give an insight into how AV are ranking. Every system has a loophole could this be AV's?

[budterm]

rayjam:

Have you checked what sites those Japanese sites link to? And what sites link to them?I would expect this to be a major factor.

[rayjam]

Edited by: rayjam

[rayjam]

Hi Budterm You know I thought the same thing but nothing special. Search on 'makeup advice' and right there at No.4 is
www.bea.hi-ho.ne.jp/~natsumi_aihara/Fmakeup/makeup.html

Look more closely and it seems to be an amateur site for transves tite make up!! meanwhile heavy weight cosmetic companies are languishing at position 10+. interesting no?

[Machiavelli]

rayjam - I agree that it is a curious site in itself, but I don't agree that it isn't relevant to the query. I don't speak Japanese, but it would appear that the page contains quite a large amount of make up advice. You will notice that the site doesn't appear when you search for English-only sites. So why is it not relevant to the all languages search?

[rayjam]

Yes it is curious, and although totally relevant to the search it still makes me wonder why it was ranked so high without seeming to be intentionally optimized. If there are any japanese speaking SEO's out there ... it would be interesting to hear their views on this.

[Machiavelli]

Probably click-through. It seems to me that it is already at position 3 today, when yesterday it was at 4, probably because several people read this thread and checked it out. If Japanese transve stite makeup advice is particular popular in Japan, then the click-throughs from the Japanese might out-weigh the Americans and Europeans (etc.) who do the search. Entirely off the top of my head, I would suppose that most European and American women would seek make up advice from magazines or friends more than from the web.

Also, many of the bigger named companies do not seem to be particularly forthcoming with makeup advice, unless you go through all their flash, etc.

[rayjam]

I didn't know click thru is a factor in AV . Thanks Machiavelli.