Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've been spending the last few months working on a 3 year old (completely white-hat)site. Overall, traffic has been steadily (but slowly) climbing (thanks to lots of link-bait, new content, etc.), and I'm happy with our results so far.
This week, however, something has occurred that has me scratching my head.
When I checked our most coveted (single) & competetive keyword a few days ago, I was delighted to find our site listed at #5. This is a phrase that gets searched for an average of about 41000 per day with Google, so I naturally expected to see a pretty decent bump (over maybe a few thousand visitors a day) in traffic.
There WAS a bump...but it was an (unusually) small one.
Further investigation using a popular online datacenter chekcing tool revealed that while our site DID appear at #5 at google.com, it is listed at #39 on all other datacenters...
So...my question is: What causes a site to rank so much higher ONLY on google.com, but much lower on all the other datacenters?
There definitely is a last minute filtering of the results that happens between the data centers and google.com, but I never knew it could BOOST a given site that far.
By any chance does your site have lots of backlinks from other sites that are indexed on that particular search?
All of our links are one-way (we do not trade links, etc.), with exception of some natural links to other sites in our field when they make sense for the user.
I've never encountered this either - but it has stuck now for almost two weeks. We're still at #39 across al datacenters for this particualr keyword, but #1 at google.com I should also note that we're #39 at every other country specific (i.e. google.co.uk) google.
Ah well....it's not really that big of a deal I suppose - we continue to move up in the other datacenters every 6-8 weeks or so.
Make sure that you are logged out of all Google accounts before you check your sites position in Google.com. Google is now filtering results based on your individual search history and bookmarks. It also appears if you have bookmarks in iGoogle that the filter to other results gets more aggressive.
I have a high value keyword that is typically #11 until I log into my Google acct. then the result is #1.
I also must note that if I am logged in to Google and the more and more I check my other individual pages ranking on Google and then click on the cache or result, that those individual pages continue to migrate up in the serps. I can clearly influence the serps based on my search history.
WebFusion!
Google.com is now customizing results based on individual browsing history.
Make sure that you are logged out of all Google accounts before you check your sites position in Google.com. Google is now filtering results based on your individual search history and bookmarks. It also appears if you have bookmarks in iGoogle that the filter to other results gets more aggressive.I have a high value keyword that is typically #11 until I log into my Google acct. then the result is #1.
I also must note that if I am logged in to Google and the more and more I check my other individual pages ranking on Google and then click on the cache or result, that those individual pages continue to migrate up in the serps. I can clearly influence the serps based on my search history.
Nope...that's not it. I have my google account set to NOT record my history - and I do not use any other google services other than gmail, adsense, and adwords.
I've tried it logged out, cookies erased, multiple I.P.'s....it happens every time.
By any chance have you tested this out surfing by proxy? When i am seeing things like that i will hop on a german proxy and see if its the same. If it is in a geographical location similar you your IP addresses it might be geotargeting the results to your location.
It's a good thing! that I've noticed also with sites, 2-3 years old, competing for highly competitive 1-word terms.
If i can coin a phrase (all rights reserved, trademark pending).. it's a new "single word sandbox" aka "single word honeymoon period"
Keep doing what you're doing (or a bit more :wink:) and soon you'll see yourself on the front page of ALL DCs for that term.
You're very close to being considered a true "authority"
And we all know "authorities" can get away with all kinds of things.
Heck, they even get nice little emails from Goog when you're breaking the rules. :P
