Wrong URL Ranking, Does Verbatim Search give clues?

[mark_roach]

There have been lots of discussions in the past about Google ranking the "wrong" page for a query.

I wonder if the new Verbatim Search [webmasterworld.com] gives any clues as to why Google might rank the wrong page.

I have a number of searches where, in my opinion, the wrong page is returned from my site. I have just tried most of them using the verbatim search and in all cases the "right" page is displayed.

I am now fairly certain (I suspected it before) that the reason the wrong page appears in the regular search is because of one of the two reasons below :

•including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
•finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])

Anyone else seen similar results ?
And if so what to do now to get the right page ranking ?

[Planet13]

No experience with this problem myself, but the thing that seems to jump out to me is adding more synonyms to the page that you WANT to rank well.

So if you want the page blue_cars.html to rank well for the keyword "blue cars" then I would definitely have the phrases blue autos, blue automobiles, blue vehicles, etc., on that page as well. I wonder if including different shades of blue (cobalt, robin's egg, sky, turquoise, etc.,) would help as well?!?!?!

The obvious problem to me then is if you are trying to get a blue_cars.html page AND a blue_autos.html page to rank, that might be really difficult, because by adding synonyms to one page you will be taking away from the "uniqueness" of the other page...

[Robert Charlton]

...I would definitely have the phrases blue autos, blue automobiles, blue vehicles, etc., on that page as well....

I would be extremely careful not to overdo this.

Ditto, I would not overdo the synonyms, either in the nouns or in the adjectives. Too many synonyms might well look like keyword stuffing when Verbatim Search is turned off and the synonym recognition and co-occurrence factors are dialed back up.

Consider instead what a naturally occurring vocabulary distribution would be when the page is actually about the topic on which you're focused, in the context you're discussing. A page about cooking turkeys might include mentions with specifics of oven temperature, roasting, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc. A page about turkeys in the wild might discuss specifics of feathers, mating calls, habitat, and competitive species.

But to have the page about cooking turkeys excessively repeat the word "turkey"... as in "turkey roasting", "turkey stuffing", "cranberry sauce on your turkey", etc, would be just plain silly. This kind of repetition simply doesn't occur naturally.

I think that phrase-based indexing forces you to be a lot more subtle in how you target phrase variations.

[micklearn]

But to have the page about cooking turkeys excessively repeat the word "turkey"... as in "turkey roasting", "turkey stuffing", "cranberry sauce on your turkey", etc, would be just plain silly. This kind of repetition simply doesn't occur naturally.

Unfortunately, what you are describing is exactly what I am seeing rank above other sites. Spam away with anchor text with your method of choice, you'll be in one of the top three spots with "enough" links. I can't believe some of the searches that I've randomly performed. Google seems to be in beta mode for over the last year or so. Good luck mark_roach.

[Robert Charlton]

Spam away with anchor text with your method of choice, you'll be in one of the top three spots with "enough" links.

mick - I'm not sure what you're saying here. I was talking about phrases on a page, not in inbound anchors. Are you saying that you can get away with these similar phrases if you have sufficient inbound anchors, or are you saying something else? I'm not disagreeing... and I'm definitely not disagreeing about the beta mode.

I'm just not sure what you're saying about my comments re targeting too many phrases containing synonyms with the same modifier on the same page.

[MikeNoLastName]

Not saying it is the norm, but I have seen pages sitting solid in the #1 position for 2/3 word searches which have keywords stuffed to the gills (literally 25% according to keyword checker), at the bottom of the page, and otherwise minimal content. Things like nonsensical columns of words like: "green widget, nice blue widget, ugly red widget, happy widget, big bad widget, where's my widget, get yourself a widget...".
I'll be happy to send you examples.