Hyphenated keyword URLs

Maybe 4 keywords is too many......

[aus_dave]

Most of my URLs are 2 or 3 hyphenated keywords. I get good rankings with most of these pages.

I recently put up a new page, and it happened to warrant a 4 keyword URL. When checking this 4 keyword phrase (with no quotes) I was puzzled to find the page ranked around 400th out of 200,000 results. However, when checking the first 3 keywords as a phrase it ranked 12th out of 800,000 ;).

This seems to suggest that the algorithm may have changed to minimise the effect of stuffing keywords into URLs. Anyone else had recent experience of this? The fourth keyword is a minor one i.e. a fairly 'generic' term.

I might try renaming this page to a 3 keyword URL and see if it improves next update (PR is expected to be relatively stable :)).

[vitaplease]

Does your title carry the same four words?

Do the anchortexts of backlinks carry all four words?

[aus_dave]

vitaplease, interesting you should ask :).

Page title begins with the 4 keyword phrase and then 3 other words after it.

Only one incoming link, which is from a site map. I wanted to test how well Google found the page with only this link and it worked well (pathetic I know but I had to prove it to myself ;)).

Incoming link text has the 4 keyword phrase only.