In "Omitted Results" - but only for exact phrases

[crobb305]

I have a page that has ranked very well for a long time, BUT it is now being sent to the supplemental index for on-page phrases searched in quotes. If you hit on the "omitted results" link, the page comes back to the #2 spot, only to be outranked by the whois (DT) link. This is happening for all sentences from the page that I search in quotes. So, my question is, what type of filter or penalty would this be? Again, the page ranks #1 for a lot of big phrases and has a visible (toolbar) PR5. If people are stealing my content, then they certainly shouldn't outrank me for my own text.

This is very confusing to me, and also alarming because it may indicate a penalty in the making?

[edited by: tedster at 6:34 pm (utc) on May 21, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[tedster]

Clarification please - when you click on the Omitted Results link, does your URL show a "Supplemental Result" tag, or is it just in the Omitted Results? They're not the same thing,

[crobb305]

Ted, it is just omitted. At no point do I actually see a "supplemental" tag. If I am the original author of the content, then I don't know why it would be "omitted".

Even new paragraphs that I have added in the past week are "omitted". But sure enough, there is DT ranking #1 for my content.

I wanted to clarify that I see no drop in traffic and there is no immediate indication of penalty. However, the fact that my page is "omitted" for exact snippets of text from the page (with scrapers and DT placed ahead of it) tells me there is something going on. Has anyone seen this precursory to a large-scale penalty?

[tedster]

Omitted Results are about duplicate and near-duplicate detection - that's not the same as having a green "Supplemental Result" tag. It does sound like the scrapers are being seen as a more authoritative URL for the phrase.

If you're only seeing this for exact phrase searches, in quotes, that would explain why it hasn't affected your traffic. But it does sound like a warning that something is goind a bit wonky. Very strange, especially for a URL with a TBPR of 5.

[crobb305]

Well I have found it very alarming that the content taken from my site for the whois/DT database is ranking #1 for MY content. I have been torn with whether or not to ban their spider in htaccess, like I have done for so many other proxies.

[netmeg]

I have a boatload of omitted results urls that are still ranking #1 and sending traffic. I don't think it's entirely accurate at the moment.

[piney]

This happened to one of my pages about a week ago on a one-word search. My page (pr4) was omitted in the search results for that word for about 3 days (or more, as I don't know when it started). If I made the word into a phrase, the page was in the results. If I added "-anyword" to the search, it came up in the results.

I looked at google webmaster tools and saw that the word was mentioned on my site, overall, about a third more than another word that was doing fine in the results. In addition, there was a larger difference between the inbound link text for this word and its mention on the site (than words that were doing fine in the results). In other words, while the word was about 9th or so in the most frequently used words in inbound link text, it was the 2nd or 3rd most frequently used word on the site. I increased the mention of the word on the page and decreased the usage in link text on other pages on the site.

I don't know that anything I did helped. It was back to normal (but gained in ranking a bit) after the 3rd day.

There was no duplicate content, scrapers, or anything like that, though.