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- one highlighted word in the SERPs. Not really relevant.
- Page 2: 2 highlighted words. Closer, but not relevant.
- Page 3: 2 highlighted words. 1 possibly relevant, the other, not really.
...other entires on the above pages had absolutely no mention of the word nor were they topics even close to the query entered with the possible exception of 1 result - which didn't have a highlighted word.
...however, I did notice that on each of these pages there were 6 sponsored links relevant to the query!
How is one supposed to interpret this without a cynical raising of the right (or left) eyebrow?
I know someone with a relevant site within the query who is no where to be seen! So he has had to fork out for sponsored links.
Sometimes it's quirky results like this that highlight the weaknesses of the algo employed, whether that be based on page-rank or relevancy or whatever...
One can't help coming away from such results without feeling that perhaps the algo is not capable of filtering on-page content adequately enough to determine whether a page is on-topic, or simply making a passing reference...
...for instance, I might have within my alt tag, alt="logo - company name". Is Google now going to interpret that page as a relevant SERP for the keyword "logo"? Even when the page overwhelmingly isn't and there should be plenty of other sites out there that are?
Or, more cynically, is one to come away feeling that because it's not a Google-whack or a strict "non-result", then the attitude is to throw up a load of non-relevant results because another algo detects a relevant sponsored ad?
Google's use of off-page factors is in part what put them ahead of other engines. Most of the time it helps but sometimes of course the links might not be as good an indicator as the words on the page. Ultimately, your or my ability to decide whether the results of some search are relevant to our query will beat the engine.
You know someone with a relevant site, but Google just has to look at the Web to try to match your query. For example, do the contents of the IMG alt attribute tend to be relevant? What if in a link? Google make a decision, hopefully right more often than wrong.
I know it's easy to read more into irrelevant results, but I think I've read about as many suggestions that Google boost AdWords customers to reward their spend as I've read suggestions that Google lower AdWords customers to increase their spend. All in all, I think it's safe to assume that AdWords don't affect SERPs.
Now and again something odd happens (like the strange duplicate/redirect behaviour in December 2001 or the current high ranking PDF thing), but again it seems more likely that these are anomalies that Google would like to fix, rather than conspiracies.
