Keyword results only when including site:example.com

[deadsetchamp]

I am a bit puzzled by the following:

If I do a search for some content on one of my category pages nothing is returned. An example of this would be "the best widgets in town are here".

But if a do another search <on my site> using site:example.com "the best widgets in town are here" then my page is shown.

Does anyone know why this would be the case? The page looks like it has been correctly cached, the URL is quite old but the content is about a month old. The content is unique (well I wrote it and no one else is showing up for it)

Is this normal? I havent come across it before.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:34 am (utc) on Feb. 25, 2009]
[edit reason] use example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[skweb]

It simply means that G does not think that your page should show up for that combination of words. It could be that there are no good links to that page or G algo calculates that other pages are better.

Of course when you do a site search it will show up.

[tedster]

I agree. The Google algo for regular queries is moving more and more towards a kind of "fuzzy logic". It's not much like the pure text match, Boolean kind of search that we first knew.

[deadsetchamp]

Thanks guys - just thought it was strange as it is the first time I have seen it.

As the content can be found through the site: search does that mean it will still be helping the page?

Basically we have a 10,000 product retail site and previously most of the pages were just product images with basic descriptions (colour, size, cost etc). We thought it would be good to put some unique content for our main products and have done it for about 100 so far. Just trying to work out whether the exercise is worth it or not.

[tedster]

Sure - unique content on a page has many benefits that will continue to work for you as your site grows.

[deadsetchamp]

Good stuff - will keep pushing it then. Thanks for the quick replies.