Pages that link to my homepage more relevant than my homepage.

Why posting text from my homepage makes other pages more relevant than mine

[Talar]

For about a year now, my site lists at the bottom of the results for unique keyword strings from it. All the other results are referring/quoting the text on my homepage, often including a link.

Eg, if I search for the title of my homepage or even the copyright notice, which are unique to my homepage, all listings refer/quote/link to my homepage, but my homepage lists as the last result.

I’ve been unable to duplicate this problem on any other search engine engine (all other search engines tested list my page first for the same searches).

Why are webpages referring/quoting/linking to my website now considered more relevant than my website itself?

[blaketar]

Could have alot due to age of your site compared to the others. I remember when I first launched my website google always listed other sites which used our unique slogan before or better than our site.

How old is your website?

[Quadrille]

Don't worry about unique keyword strings; worry about the searches that potential visitors would use.

If my site was quoted on Amazon, I'd expect that quote to bring Amazon up before me. Google, too. And M$N ...

That tells you those sites are more authoritative - yes, and probably older, than my site. In general.

But it tells you next to nothing about the behaviour of normal human beings, who are unlikely to use those search terms.

Same applies to all these domain searches webmasters do; Funny, really - if we search for our own name, it's dismissed as a vanity search - but when we search for our own domain, it's SEO? I don't think so! :)

[GenerationTalk]

Try get more inbound links with your website title as the link.

[Talar]

How old is your website?

My site is 9 years old. Until about a year ago I didn’t have this problem.

worry about the searches that potential visitors would use

Try get more inbound links with your website title as the link

I first noticed the problem with the searches that potential visitors use (which are the only ones I really care about). I then tried to use strings unique to my website only as a diagnostic/extreme test, expecting not to be able to duplicate the problem. It happens for any string.

those sites are more authoritative - yes, and probably older

The linking sites are definitely less authoritative, newer and some are even link directories filled with AdSense (often spammy; of course I do not link back to them and never requested any of them to link to my website).

[blaketar]

I would say you could rule out the age issue. What about potential 302 or scraper issues? I am not exactly clear on the full details but have heard many talk about these issues....

[tedster]

I started seeing this kind of issue about two months ago, on and off and only for a few domains. At the same time, I also noticed that Google was more often returning pages that were one click away from the "best" page, even on the same domain, such as the Home Page when there was a dedicated directory that was ALL on topic. These two could be related issues, but who can say for sure. Something about linking pages getting more influence in the algo, possibly?

I just do the things I can do -- especially the very basics like sane and unique title, description, and heading tags. I make sure that internal "Home" links ALL point to www.example.com, and not to /default.asp and so on. Things like that. If all seems to be ship-shape on my side, then I just hope that Google shakes off this spell. It's not good for them or their users, to say nothing of us webmasters.

In many cases, there are things hanging out for years that I know are less than ideal, but the fix has been delayed because it's a PITA to execute. Well, when trouble strikes, it's definitely past time to take on the PITA, I say,

One approach which I now take more and more is to surf the site I'm working on and look for anything that seems unintuitive -- anything at all that "makes me think". If I fix those elements (often it requires a new level redundant cues on the page) it usually helps stabilize Google results, too.

[andrewshim]

One thing that I did lately which Quadrille suggested was to make my front page "less dynamic" and add more static content. It seems to have stabilized my position in ALL serps. Even though I still find myself going up and down, but it's only by one place (plus/minus).

I kinda agree with tedster... sometimes, you just gotta look at your website from a visitor's perspective and think ".... well I like my site this way, but is this what visitor's want " and "... is this was Google considers good?"

[walkman]

I have the same problem with one site. I don't even rank for "Name.com." I think it's a link penalty (too many links, too fast). I removed the link from the site back in October--still no luck.

Have you gotten lots of links lately? I made the HUGE, and very costly mistake, to link from another site of mine. I screwed up my apache rewrite and google indexed the index page 8000+ times, and aparently saw 8000 inbound links to my other site. I am 99% sure that did me in.

Has anyone asked Google to have the penalty removed for link issues, once the issues have been resolved? I remember Matt askign people to address the problems, and then ask for reinclusion if there was a huge drop in traffic.

[walkman]

Can't edit anymore so I'll add here: I just checked for a sentence and a new site has copied my site exactly as it was. I mean, view source /cut and paste style; even the images are hotlinked to my site (Oh, he has changed some colors so he probably thinks he's safe). The only thing missing are the daily additions, making "their" page about 50% smaller.

Needless to say I emailed him, his host, and left a message too. I am so upset right now...he's lucky he is not in the same state as me. Judging from the content, it was copied sometime in Jannuary; if this is the root of the problem, he has caused me a lot of monetary losses.