Simple optimization for keyphrase gives weird SERPs

[foy]

hey there.

hope you're still able to breathe after those astonishing fluctuations...

What I'm up to... I optimized a new build single content page for a specific keyphrase. let's take little blue widget.

Google indexed this new page very fast since it's been linked from a domain which was already in it's index.

So... what I did was I made a simple html-page with some paragraphs of text (containing the keyphrase), a picture (little-blue-widget.gif) and an inbound anchor link little-blue-widget.html#top

the filename of that page is named as described above.

title-tag has keyphrase, as well as a <h1>-title at page top.

now the SERPs:

I get first page results (e.g. #3 or #4) when searching for blue widget or little blue or little widget but I don't when looking for little blue widget which was actually being my aim.

any ideas?

[foy]

no one?

[tedster]

Just pondering -- it's a very interesting report. This might be a window into something deeper that's related to recent changes. On the face of it, it sure flies in the face of reasonable expectations.

What happens on a quoted search for the three keywords?

[Nikke]

Hyphen filter?

I have seen something similar happen to hyphenated domains. The domain is something like widget-world.info and it just won't show above position 400 for a search for little widget. However, it keeps a good position for just widget.

Lots of subpages hold #1-#10 positions as well, but the site just won't make it for the search phrase for which it is really optimized.

I have put this down to a filter for over optimization in my choise of domain name.

Another site, in another area, has a non-hyphenated domain, gadgetworld.com and there, I cannot see any signs of this filter.

[foy]

that may be the case (according to hyphens).

I'll get rid of it and post the new result as soon as google shows the changed page.

[sailorjwd]

I've been seeing the same thing on the handful of pages that came back from my Feb2/May5 downfall.

For instance (similar to real words but different).

I have a site all about Fortran programming.

I have a page that as examples and discussion about 'Fortran For Loop Examples'. Page Name might be for-loop.htm

Title, Description, H1, intro paragraph contains keywords.

(I have a bunch of pages with similar structure but different topics).

Search for 'fortran for loop examples' I am no where to be found - even exact search. 'fortran for loop' gets me nothing.

#1 or #2 for 'for loop'

Top 3-4 for 'for loop examples'.

Seems like the entire site is penalized for it's main subject 'Fortran'.

Any comments about this?

These are obviously not money keywords.

[g1smd]

Where's my post about getting a completely different snippet (i.e. from another site!) when adding one more search term to see where a particular page ranks?

[tedster]

Can't find a previous post anywhere -- but thanks for adding the information to this thread. That's another very strange result in somewhat the same category.

[g1smd]

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