Ask Jeeves Rankings gone south

[stdavis]

Is it just me or has ASK lost the plot. One of my customer's has been optimised for the phrase 'keyword parts' and until recently held a top 15 position in ASK Jeeves for a UK search.
Ask then changed it's logarithm and he dropped to 61st place - fair enough!
When I tried to research the winning formula of the top sites I discovered that most of the top sites had hardly any mentions of the word 'parts'. I fail to see how they can be displaying the best sites for the customer's search - it almost seems like the sites with the most money are getting top positions? Am I getting paranoid?

[edited by: heini at 8:11 am (utc) on Oct. 21, 2003]
[edit reason] please don't use specific keywords & search phrases ¦ thanks! [/edit]

[martinibuster]

Teoma is unique from any other search technology because it analyzes the Web as it actually exists - in subject-specific communities.

From the AskJeeves website [sp.ask.com].

[caine]

'Subject-Specific Communities' - another way to look at it is related linking - or machine elective hubs, hence if the site is connected in the right places, it does not need to have a kw combo of massive proportions to gain a good rank for it, becuase of its ranking within the hub as elected by other website's vote's (or incoming links from them).

Best case scenario for Ask/Teoma from an algo point of view is to identify your area (more specific the better), then chase highly related terms - though this does not always mean a direct competitor, lateral relatedness can work also.

A site can get downgraded because of the quality of the site; hence - its content, structure, linking partners (dodgy one's), etc. Teoma has strong spam filtering, and does occasionally adjust the levels, and certainly at the moment - according to some at AJ, they are trying to get the DB of site's as big as Google's, and this may lead them to twist the filters and the algo weightings over the next few months. So there may still be a bumpy ride ahead for some.