why doesn't Google highlight the keyword in my URL?

tested on other sites and it does it ...sometimes

[walkman]

why does Google highlight the keyword on "domain.com/keyword/ on some sites and it doesn't on some others? It's not case sensitive, and with all things that I tried I couldn't find a patern. It's all over the place, unless I'm missing something. I even tried with a page that I have an incoming link staright to it.

Question #2: Does it mean that no weight is given in the SERPS if it's not highlighted?

I suggest you try it for your own keywords...maybe I'm nuts...

[Marcia]

Are you talking about not being highlighted when you do a search that includes that keyword?

[AjiNIMC]

Yeah I guess he is talking about the search results not getting highlighted, can u send pm me the url, I will like to have closer look.

Aji

[DaveN]

how many /'s deep are you going ;)

DaveN

[walkman]

it's /domain.com/keyword-something
and I tried even with pages linked directly from my index page (PR6). Even searches I come up first are not highlighted.

It's not just with my links, I've noticed this on other sites too.

Marcia,
yeah when I search for keyword something
the domain.com/keyword-something should be highlighted, but it isn't. It is highlighted on the title and body though.

[walkman]

this is an example:
search for W3C Webmaster:
[google.com...]

or just Webmaster (scroll to the W3C listing...about 40 or so)
[google.com...]

note to mods: these are generic terms and not related to my field. I just want to show an example.

[bether2]

In the WC3 example the first letter of the keyword is upper case. It was discussed in another thread that this will cause the keyword to not be highlighted in some instances - or maybe all instances - can't remember.

It's happening for some of my pages that I named using both upper and lower case (before I knew better). And my host is using a operating system that doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case. (And I made that decsion before I knew better too.)

Beth

[walkman]

"keyword to not be highlighted in some instances"
does it still add weight in the serps though if it's uppercase? Does anyone know?

[More Traffic Please]

I asked a very similar question to the one that started this thread some time back at [webmasterworld.com ]

I decided to do a test. Here is what I did.

1) I came up with two gibberish words that Google had zero results for and it did not give it's "Did you mean" message for either. I'll call one "bertonwave" and the other one "bertontide" (sticky me if you want the actual words used)

2) I then created four test pages that were linked to by a PR 3 page on my site. One page URL was "mysite.com/bertontide-1.htm" the second page was "mysite.com/Bertontide-2.htm". Finally, the third page was "mysite.com/bertonwave-1.htm" and the fourth page was "mysite.com/Bertonwave-2.htm".

3) Nowhere in the anchor text or on the actual pages did the keywords bertontide or bertonwave appear. The anchor text and page text were virtually identical, just saying that they were test pages. All four were basically dead end pages with no inbound links from external sites, or any links on the pages themselves.

If Google was going to return these pages for a search based on the gibberish keywords, it was going to have to do it based only on the page name. Within about five days, Google was showing a cache for all four pages. Here is what happens when you do a search for the two phrases.

A search for bertonwave returns this...

Results 1-1 of about 2 for bertonwave
mysite.com/bertonwave-1.htm
(clicking on the link that says "repeat the search with the omitted results included" looked like this)
mysite.com/Bertonwave-2.htm

A search for bertontide returns this...

Results 1-1 of about 2 for bertontide
mysite.com/Bertontide-2.htm
(clicking on the link that says "repeat the search with the omitted results included" looked like this)
mysite.com/bertontide-1.htm

I realize that this is way too small of a sample group to draw any conclusions from, but I thought it was interesting. The upper and lower case results were split 50/50. I think the fact that upper case KW's are not highlighted is probably just a bug.

Again, if anyone wants the actual keywords I used, just sticky me and you can see for yourself.

[bether2]

I think the fact that upper case KW's are not highlighted is probably just a bug.

That's what I figured, too.