Alta Vista - odd inclusions, odd omissions

[tedster]

Right now there is no urgency aqt all to Alta Vista rankings for my clients. Every site I manage got less than 00.5% of their SE traffic from AV last month.
Still I got curious about what was happening with the fallen giant right now, so I checked on a few phrases where one client has recently done really well on the search engines that do generate traffic.

I found an extremely weird situation. One client has a group of pages optimized for two word phrases that are in the top ten on many search engines.

For those same two-word phrases, the AV SERPs show no hint of those precise pages - but they each show several from the same site within the first three pages of returns.

But these are pages that don't even use the keywords. Pages that don't link TO the optimized pages and are not linked FROM the optimized pages. Pages that are only loosely related to the precise target phrase, and wouldn't at all satisfy someone doing the search. Pages that are "close but no cigar."

Something very strange is going on with the AV algorithm. I don't have the time or motivation to figure it out, but somehow they are getting into the right general area on a keyword and still completely miss returning the most relevant, which is right there nearby and spidered at the same time.

Seems to me you'd have to work hard to do that. It's like linguistic programming gone mad.

[Brett_Tabke]

I think it is AV's link pop algo Tedster (it's different than anything else out there). I don't understand it myself.

[pete]

Tedster, Ive seen this as well. Some of our less optimised pages are ranking really well for important key terms.

One of them is a destination page consisting mostly of images with not one keyword on it. Yet it pulls in at 3, 4 and 6 for important one and two word phrases.

One similarity that I have noticed amongst these pages which rank well. On our sites, they all have prominent and consistent inernal linkage. I think this might be it

[Mike_Mackin]

I'm also noting that they are now running ad.doubleclick in first position over 4 Overture PLUS a tower ad from doubleclick to the right. Talk about monitization.