Change in AV algo?

[Robert Charlton]

I noticed this over the weekend, and at first I thought it might have something to do with pay for inclusion, but I'm now thinking it's related to a change in the AV algo.

One of my clients' sites, whose index page recently appeared in AV, has a title of the form:

CompanyName Widgets - adjective1, adjective2, adjective3 widgets and wizbangs

Until this weekend, it was ranking #1 for adjective1 widgets.

Over the weekend, though, I noticed that the site occasionally disappeared from AV results for this search, and finally it vanished altogether. At first I didn't know what to think... I feared that I'd either been penalized for recent submission of interior pages, or pay for inclusion was fouling everything up.

Running some other searches, the site showed up for the company name, so it was still in there. Adjective2 widgets didn't show up. Adjective3 widgets, however, did very well.

I had a flash that proximity in the title might have something to do with it, even though "adjective1 widgets" is the first thing on the page, and even though, in the title, "Widgets" from the company name immediately preceded "adjective1."

I then had another flash... word order... and I also ran a search on widgets adjective1. It's #1.

This discussion omits a lot of variables, but it does illustrate something that wasn't happening last week.

As a final exercise, I've run several searches on other clients' sites where there's ranking on phrases in the form of CityName keyword. I didn't see any changes when I searched on keyword CityName, but that might be because almost all sites have the city name first, so they'd all be at the same disadvantage.

Anyone seeing anything similar?

[rencke]

>Anyone seeing anything similar?

Yep. But I seem to remember something about AV randomizing results. Don't know if it is true, but there appears to be a major re-shuffling going on of DB content involving all non-US DB:s. That might have something to do with it.

[Robert Charlton]

This is definitely US data. If results are randomized, I haven't seen the site reappear on this search for several days now, so I'm assuming the change is an algo change. I'm waiting until sub-pages appear before even considering tweaking the home page... it's doing so well everywhere else I don't want to mess with it.

One of the other things I'm noticing is that AV is no longer reporting phrases in its lower-left search terms report. It may be they've abandoned that kind of analysis and simply tweaked the algo to make proximity and word order in the title more important.

[rencke]

Well, the thing is if - as has been suggested in the European forum - they are consolidating all data into one single huge db, then they would have to tweak the algo to make sure that Americans don't get non-US sites. That could be a reason. I would wait for the dust to settle.

[Robert Charlton]

Dust seems to have settled and results are back to normal. Other threads on the AV forum are also reporting a return to the natural order. Interesting and disconcerting glitch, at any rate, and it lasted a while.

[Robert Charlton]

>>results are back to normal<<

That was last night. Today, we're gone again unless you search widgets adjective1. I'd be wondering whether they might be rotating results, except that I'm seeing the "normal" results only in brief flashes.

[msgraph]

Were they showing phrases on the search terms report when you saw that brief change last night?

[Robert Charlton]

Good question, and I didn't think to look. I was so happy that things seemed to be back to normal that I assumed they were.

[msgraph]

Everything went bad for me when the stopped matching pages by phrases or at least when they stopped displaying that feature on the bottom. Nowadays it's like you have to target one keyword in order to have a chance a being listed well.

[Robert Charlton]

>>Were they showing phrases on the search terms report when you saw that brief change last night?<<

Tonight we're in again... and while they are showing the search terms report, they aren't showing phrases. I'll have to check when we don't appear to see if there's a difference.