Ranking mystery

[tyrojds]

i am baffled by a situation i come across frequently when i search for a very common phrase such as, "widgets," or "used widgets." as expected, a couple of million results will return. upon further review, however, i've often noticed that the sites returned in the top ten or better often show themselves to be sites with very low, if any, page rank, irrelevant content, very few or zero sites linking to it, and no mention of widgets among their keyword meta tags (some don't even have keywords at all. so how do they attain such preferential treatment? anyone know what's up with that? thanks.

[agerhart]

>>>very low, if any, page rank

PageRank is not the end-all-be-all of ranking in Google. It is not uncommon to see websites with a low PageRank out ranking websites with a higher PageRank.

>>>irrelevant content

Make sure you check all of the variables that count in Google.

>>>very few or zero sites linking to it

I bet the few links that the website in question has, has some great link text.

>>>no mention of widgets among their keyword meta tags

META tags don't matter in Google. It's all about titles, links, and content.

[Dino_M]

I alway think Amazon are upto something fishy with Google as they do not seem to use SEO and their Pr is only 1-3 (apparently this is because they redirect,which I always thought was frowned upon by google), but they are always number 1.

They do have 55 000 back links I suppose.

[Sinner_G]

They do have 55 000 back links I suppose.

Add a couple of zeroes to that number. There are so many pages out there linking to them when they list books as references or the like...

Agerhart, would that mean, if page that links to a site has a link text like 'the best widgets, widgets and even more widgets', that will help its ranking?

[martinibuster]

PageRank is not the end-all-be-all

This is so very true and must be strongly emphasized.

Even the Google folks downplay PR as just ONE component of many many others used to produce the search result.

[agerhart]

Sinner_G,

If you are targeting "blue widgets", you want the text of the incoming links to read "blue widgets".

[vitaplease]

..very low, if any, page rank, irrelevant content, very few or zero sites linking to it..

tyrojds,

If it is what I think it is (your earlier edited posting?) you will find the answer to you mystery in this posting using the alltheweb backlink checker:

[webmasterworld.com...]