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(NOTE THAT THIS IS A THEORY BUT... IT MAKES SENSE)
First, take a look at for example www.google.es
If you search for something the url will be like: [google.es...]
Now, change the hl=es to hl=en... the results in .com will appear. What does this mean? IMO it means that both datacenters have the same information, they just show different results according to language.
Why? Because of theming and stemming, two very relationed concepts.
In order to make themes, Google must have stemming technology to associate words, topics, etc.
But don't you remember stemming is only available for the English language?
So the answer is pretty simple, if we place a language that's not english Google will not be able to theme sites because it just doesn't fully understand what the websites are about.
I own spanish sites as well and I know there is some stemming going on but just a little. Until they fully develop stemming technology for spanish, french, german, etc. .es, .de, .fr will keep showing unfiltered results (unless they start showing .com's results because of the confusion created).
I still think serps in .com will change because this is how Google works. They make big changes. Then they adjust them.
So... My answer to the Florida and Austin update? It is a theme filter. Sites that have too many themes are probably (not always) sites that want to artificially increase pagerank, anchor text, etc. With this, they achieve what they wanted, avoid "black hat" SEOed sites (some white hat might fall in this filter too). Although this kicked me out for some keywords I think it's a good solution.
Just in case I paste it one more time:
(NOTE THAT THIS IS A THEORY BUT... IT MAKES SENSE)
Julian Yanover.
Right now large, diverse, authoritative sites are in general doing better than average. There is no benefit to lessening the breadth of a domain's theme or in the links out or coming in.
Also, I just checked a one word search (high traffic but no SEOed sites). Only one site was dropped from the serps. Guess what?
It's the only one who had casino, free stuff, etc. sites as related. So, the webmaster thought swapping links with not-related sites was the best thing to do and he was heavily affected (as we all thought).
The ones who stayed on top, had related sites as related.
Julian Yanover.
I believe they are implementing the new LOCALRANK. The objective of the LOCALRANK is to prevent multiple sites from the same owner to have multiple listing in the SERPs. I see that a competitor of mine lost most of his sites in the SERPs.
Although it might not be LOCALRANK, but LOCALRANK will definitely feed in the future. Just like Google will take care of SEO eventually and continuosly.
Here's why: If you optimized your site for keyword1, keyword2 and keyword3 and just add fakespanishword1 and fakespanishword2 Google probably would think that the spanish word is just your company's name or some odd word.
You would have to add a lot spanish content and your site wouldn't be optimized for the first keyword1, 2 and 3.
Julian Yanover.
I just cant understand why one of my websites does not appear for a search on the company name - which is a minor brand name.
How can Google apply Stemming to my Company name if it is not a real word?
Simple theming is definitely not at play here. If it was, all these mini-webs of multiple nothing sites would be dominating the serps in competitive areas. They are not. (They sometimes do fine, but not to the degree they were even just via anchor text.)
Focusing on themes is the general direction, but it is the wrong road. Themes are too simplistic. They are too easy to manipulate using the most rudimentary seo.
Just wanted to thank 2k for his great research, as I did in ****, and for encouraging me to do my own research and find out GREAT stuff about today's serps.
Going to sleep now... 7 am here and haven't slept yet.
Julian Yanover.
Focusing on themes is the general direction, but it is the wrong road. Themes are too simplistic. They are too easy to manipulate using the most rudimentary seo.
FWIW I think that sensing themes only tells the algo what the site/page is about it does nothing to help rank a page in broader internet terms. I'm pretty sure themes are involved but they are doing something else to decide rank.
It makes absolute sense at a time that Adsense is being given a big push out for Google to incorporate the same technology as part of their search algo otherwise sites carrying Ads by Google would only be found by random walks. I've noticed sites doing well in current SERPs which were knocked by Florida carrying Adsense ads (may be just a coincidence). In my case the terms affected are all Adsense terms and I'm doing more business than ever but I'm paying more for it now.
Folks on the Adsense forum have noted that it is sometimes very difficult to get relevant ads on their pages and they sometimes get ads which relate to a single occurance of a term on the page and no backlinks with that term even though the page is well on theme for the relevant ads that they are not getting. The technology is not perfect and may still have a number of bugs.
The other component in all of this ie. establishing rank is where the new algo falls down badly. Having sensed the theme and sometimes got this wrong whatever is being used to calculate rank is leading to a new form of Spam and will, I beleive swamp the Web with 100k automatically generated directories. It may be that Google can't change this in their plans because of what they have planned for "Domainpark". Here they are senseing the meaning of domain names, I guess linking related ones together and feeding them with their own automatically generated content including Adsense ads.
With any luck they will see the madness of this soon or I guess that users will move to other SEs.
Best wishes
Sid
I'd find it hard to believe that Google would set up a system whereby we could do that. As has been said, theming a site to suit the algo isn't all that easy, but scuppering a competitor's site is very easy.
Tests, and more tests are needed before any conclusions can be drawn.
Yet when I do a search like "blue widgets +a" My site is back up at #1. why would adding the word "a" make sucha huge difference, all sites use the word "a". Has there been any discussions on this, if so what do you guys think.