Rogue Keywords in Google Webmaster Tools

[Graham Wellington]

Site stats in google's webmaster tools is listing strange keywords that do not exist on my site.

Also, the keywords, when searched in google, do not point to my site even though google lists them as ranking high, from 3-15.

For instance "unusual widgets" is a search term way out of topic and and supposedly ranks #4. The term is not in any part of my site, whether it be page text or alt tags, link text, picture filename, etc.

I have several small sites and each has rogue keywords in google stats. Awstats does not list them, so for google to claim they are being 'clicked' is very odd indeed.

[bumpski]

Is it possible inbound links to your site contain the keywords in question?

Google seems to attribute keywords of links to sites as if they were in the site itself. If you've ever looked at Google's cache of pages after a multi-keyword search you see the comment from Google that the keywords may be in the site shown in the cache, or in LINKs to the site in cache.

So perhaps investigate sites linking to yours using Yahoo to search for inbound links. Then look at the link text.

[MThiessen]

I have found a few "rouge" keywords too, very odd...

[renomart]

Apparently people are searching for 'msnh' on my site every month. I find this strange too...

[Graham Wellington]

The rogue keywords in question are so far in left field compared to the topic of my websites, that including them in a link would be 1 in 1 million.

Google is including these unusual widgets on all of my sites. Is awstats stats wrong? I highly doubt my server log is less accurate than google, even the mystics on this board would agree. The keywords in question appear in both top search queries and top search query clicks.

Something is rotten in the state of google...

[wheelie34]

graham_wellington

Do you have any sub domains on different topics, I have one domain that has 2 sub domains on completely different topics, those words appear in sitemaps for the main domain, google seems to be combining them to the main domain.

[Graham Wellington]

I have no subdomains on the site. Its a small 10 page evergreen site that I rarely add content to.

One keyword is "lady <unusual keyword here>". For one, the word "lady" is not mentioned a single time on the site. Secondly, the other keyword is not even a word, more like some strange nickname.

This is just one example. Google mystics should accept that their do no evil engine of perfection is rife with internal bugs.

[piney]

I am seeing an effect due to what I've named my directories. I posted about the specific thing I noticed in Google in another thread, but after reading your post, it reminded me of something else... One of my sites has to do with a nature theme. One of my directories is named "wildlife" but it is broken up into two words. When I noticed it, I thought it wouldn't hurt things so I never bothered to rename the directory. I've always gotten referrals to my site based on the first part of that combined with my first name, which happens to be the stage name of a real person. I didn't know it was a real person until this morning. The first part of the word "wildlife" probably isn't listed any where on my site other than in the naming of the directory.

Is your site being penalized for the reference? I believe my site is being penalized for something for the past 3 years although I'm not sure what. I wonder if it is being penalized for appearing to try to sneak in things like this.

[trinorthlighting]

We have seen a few rogue keywords as well, but they are very similar to our site. Its a referral though, so we do not really pay to much attention to it.

[jimbeetle]

Is your site being penalized for the reference?

What? Now there's a penalty for being in the SERPs?

Please, no. We don't need no more stinkin' "penalties".

On topic: Has anybody actually checked their log files to see if the referrals exist or not?

[trinorthlighting]

Yes, the referrals exist. The keywords are similar to our site and probally not searched often in google.