Manipulating related pages in google

related: Can you tell g-bot or google what's related?

[petez1]

I have spotted a site that has hundreds (ok thousands) of product pages that are similar if not identical in content to my site. They always show up much higher in the google results with less keywords, worse title etc., so I went looking for differences.

The only real difference I could find is that every one of their pages is 'related' to the same 20 or so websites. Regardless of the content on the page. It could be dog food or car parts or ladies underware...every page returns the same sites as 'related' according googles
similar sites tab.

How is this possible...and is it the difference that is making the difference in their high placement?

[iblaine]

What about the off the page optimization? Do they have more links? Higher PR? What archor text are they using for inbound links? Are they doing any cloaking or interlinking within pages on that site?

[webnewton]

Related pages clearly means all these page have inbound links coming from some of these site(if not all) or from site who're somehow linked to these related site. You need to boost up your link strenght for each page to rank above your rival.

[petez1]

I found an SEO company that has all of the 'related' pages on their clients list / link page. The links only go to the homepages they created (and host) for these clients (my competitor included). They offer a way to make dynamic content 'google friendly' by building a virtual directory of pages that appear static.

Could the one home page link from one SEO company's site make thousands of product pages show up as related to every other site they are promoting?

There are no visible backlinks on any of the related sites.

Just seems like I'm still missing something...?

[robho]

I have a site with a few hundred thousand pages, and no outbound links. The home page (only) has links from three of my other sites.

The "similar pages" link on Google, for each one of the many thousands of pages, shows mostly home pages of a dozen or so of my sites. The only way they are similar is because they are on the same IP and have the same owner (or, the site is linked to from the same site).

So, "similar pages" really means "similar site". It doesn't imply there is any link direct to that particular page, and it's quite possible for "similar pages" to be exactly the same for every page on a site. I do have another site where the "similar pages" varies a bit, but even there thousands of pages share the same "similar pages" result.

It is unlikely to have anything at all to do with how the pages are ranked, since it does not imply direct links.

[steveb]

Check related pages to most geocities pages. The webpage might be about squishy red widgets, but the similar pages will be Yahoo, Angelfire, etc.