Google serves the wrong page for a specific product number

[budbiss]

We have an ecommerce site. Some of the products I sell have model names that are numbers. Lets say I sell a Widget 5000, Widget 6000, and Widget 7000. Well, the problem is that when I do a search on Widget 5000, Google serves up our web page for the Widget 6000. Any ideas on why this is happening? Thanks!

[jimbeetle]

Is there a link on the Widget 6000 page to the Widget 5000 page? There have been many reports over the past year or so where Google seemingly returned a "related" page rather than what would be considered the "target" page.

There have been a number of Google patent apps that talk about grouping documents, kind of in a theme-related, query-dependent sort of way. In my very, very limited understanding, I suspect that possibly/maybe/perhaps (add your own qualifier here), this behavior might (again, more qualifiers), reflect something of the sort going on, where the more powerful page -- though maybe not the most relevant page -- of a group is the one returned in the SERPs.

[budbiss]

Is there a link on the Widget 6000 page to the Widget 5000 page?

Yes, at the bottom of the page there is an area that displays links to related products. There are about 5 related products and one of those related products is the "Widget 6000" one. Perhaps that is the "problem"?

If I remove the 'related products' area, how long do you think it may take for Google to re-index this page?

Also, for what it's worth, this problem doesn't occur with Yahoo search.

[daveVk]

Also check if Widget 6000 has been indexed at all, site:example.com "Widget 6000", and that words "Widget 6000" are in the page title, h1 tag etc.

[budbiss]

I have some good news...this issue has been corrected today! Very strange. It's been happening for a long time. I didn't change anything recently. But, somehow, today Google has decided to serve up the correct web page in its results. Atleast I can rule out it being anything that I did wrong now.

[jimbeetle]

Whew, I'm sure glad you didn't take any action based on my speculation-filled post above. But here's some more. Assuming that something like doc grouping might be in play, why not assume that G would determine which page to serve by its old standby, PageRank? So any "remedy" for this situation would be the old "get more links to the page."

Again, all spec.

[Robert Charlton]

budbiss - Glad the problem is solved, but keep in mind that this may just be temporary. It may well be that the 6000 page simply fits the current algorithm better. As jimbeetle puts it, it may be "the more powerful page." Perhaps it's more favored in your site's navigation than your 5000 page is.

If I remove the 'related products' area, how long do you think it may take for Google to re-index this page?

Be careful here. If you remove the 'related products' area, you may end up creating a situation where neither page ranks. If the 6000 page is the more powerful page, then removing the nav links to the Widget 5000 page may reduce the "power" of the 5000 page even more.

I'm not saying don't remove it. I'm saying be sure you understand what you're doing.

You need to look at your navigation structure and PageRank distribution throughout the site. You should also look at external inbound links to your various pages. The best way to boost the Widget 5000 page might be to get some external inbound 'deep links' to the page, or to channel some links from elsewhere on your site to that page. Again, be cautious and don't overdo it.