Same content, different ranking

The site with more links falls off the list

[tlibson]

I look after two sites for customers who are in the same business in different parts of the country. Their content is almost identical - the only real difference is the contact info and the "meet your hostess" info. One site is listed in more regional business directories and in ODP. This site ranks #1 & #2 on Google for our primary search words; the other ranks #3 & #4.
When Teoma does a search on the same keywords, the second site (the one I consider weaker) has pages ranked #1 and #4 while the "stronger" site does not appear in the top ten!
Isn't this a little odd?
Any hints what's happening?

[le_gber]

Each Search engine has a different algorithm hence results can change a lot between 2 SE.

GOOGLE give a lot of importance to inbound links (link from other sites to yours) and it is know that they consider DMOZ as a great resource.

Teoma might concider inbound links to be less impportant which could explain the difference.

Leo

[tlibson]

The different algorithms would explain why Teoma gives the sites a different ranking from Google, but why would Teoma give the two sites different rankings from each other?
It's hard to figure out what I can do to get Teoma to recognize the missing site, when the "missing" site is already the same as the "successful" site: same text, same links, same headings.
Shouldn't Teoma treat both sites the same way?

[le_gber]

You should be careful with similar sites because they could be considered as duplicates by search engines and lead to ban of one or both of them.

May be one is better optimised for Teoma without you knowing it?

Leo

[caine]

Hi tibson,

when you say the stronger site is not listed in the top ten for your primary which the other occupies 1st and 4th for, is the stronger listed at all?

Regarding the algo, quite different in some respects, similar in others, but its a well held believe (which i also agree with) that if you wish to focus per engine on primary KW's, then multiple sites are necessary rather than one-size-fits all. Controlling multiple sites, so that they are specific to an engines algo and do not get each other banned due to dup content of multiple sites seen by the same engine is quite a complecated affair.

[tlibson]

The "blue" site does show up much deeper, and it also appears with a more refined search. The primary keywords in question are "deep widgets". The "blue" site lists higher when we change the search to "blue deep widgets (regional)".

To be honest, I'm not all that concerned with Teoma if I get top-of-page on Google. It just struck me as weird that Teoma seems to see these virtually-identical sites in substantially different ways, and that it would give preference to the site with the fewest inbound links. I have no intention of trying to manage engine-specific versions of the sites!

[edited by: caine at 10:08 am (utc) on Sep. 28, 2003]
[edit reason] member asked for the deletion of certain terms [/edit]