Is it possible to be #1 with no PR, low backlinks, low KW density?

[Frank_Rizzo]

A site which has no PR, just ONE external backlink (9 internal), and very little keyword density has gone straight in at #1 out of 241,000 sites.

Can someone tell me how this is done?

[Interent Yogi]

Its the new google . Of course you will have those things they are just not yet showing .

[doc_z]

Hard to explain without knowing details. Reasons might be:

- the page has PR but it isn't displayed so far
- the page has more backlinks but they are not shown in Google (I would look at alltheweb and altavista)
- the page is only temporarily ranked as #1 because it's a new page

Keyword density shouldn't play an important role.

[twebdonny]

I pray for a dance to put these "new" sites in their
appropriate place. Without one, we continue to decline in
rankings, thus hits, and revenue.

Has anyone else noticed such declines in their overall
traffic since June?

[Frank_Rizzo]

Just checking a typical site which is #1 for a reason I can not understand, I see that it has 2 links in Alltheweb, 9 Google/AOL (most internal), 0 Altavista, 3 Inktomi, 3 MSN.

It has the phrase in title and desc meta tag only.

Hovering over the PR bar shows 0/10.

It's not listed in DMOZ.

It just appeared this week whilst other sites with decent PR, links, density have dropped down a few notches.

Is this just a new thing from Google? How is it that sites (not necessarily that new) can go straight to #1 leapfrogging well established sites?

[doc_z]

Is this just a new thing from Google? How is it that sites (not necessarily that new) can go straight to #1 leapfrogging well established sites?

Some would call this an algo tweak.

[kelvinhui]

Always happen

[Frank_Rizzo]

But why does it happen? What is it in the algo which makes this happen?

If you can work out why then surely you have an edge.

[4eyes]

I haven't trusted the Toolbar's reporting of PR for months now.

[Stujoe]

I have accidently found that Page Title seems very important when searching for key word phrases...at least in my little niche.

I renamed a bunch of my pages a while back to be more descriptive (basically made them the same as what I wanted the descriptive page heading to be in the actual content portion). My ranking shot way up for keyword phrases that the pages are about and my traffic has trippled over the last couple of months.

I have only a PR of 4 and not a lot of backlinks at all.

Your mileage may vary.

[multilang]

same thing here, been fighting to be nr1 out of 240 000 sites for a year, hence knowing competitions pretty well. Latest update I saw a site coming from nowhere in first position. All it has in the keyword in the title, an no other word, just the keyword phrase.

The keywords are in no way repeated on the page nor elsewhere in the metatags.

All I can think of is that the site is hosted by some yahoo.net services, which don't seem to be available anymore.

google is definitely becoming less and less predictable...

[Powdork]

Has anyone else noticed such declines in their overall
traffic since June?

pages drop, pages rise,
traffic often coincides.
Another dance
will likely show
these pages do have PageRank, though.:)

Is it possible to be #1 with no PR, low backlinks, low KW density?

No, absolutely not. Can't happen. Google is probably serving you a different page based on your IP. Its definitely not the same stuff we are seeing.
Sorry, couldn't resist.;)

Also good for checking backlinks is
[search.cometsystems.com...]

Wow! I followed a tip here last night that said comet systems was showing Google backlinks under the pr 4 threshhold. Now I see comet systems has switched to AlltheWeb results. I get more hits from comet systems than any non google partner besides MSN, and more than from Netescape. Things are getting interesting.

oops, just did a site search and found out the ATW thing is not so new