Ranking disparities for nearly identical keword sets.?

[Oimachi2]

2 strange things are happening.

First of all, my rankings in webmater tools don't reflect real searches, I'm talking of by 100's

For example, webmater tools shows rank 6 but in reality it's not top 100...

Another strange thing is different ranking for basically same keywords. for example:


"blue widget" ranks #3
"blue widgets" ranks #300


Any idea what is going on?

Could it be that too many exact anchor text links prevents "blue widgets" for ranking, and maybe
blue widget" doesn't have as many exact anchor text match?

[Planet13]

For example, webmater tools shows rank 6 but in reality it's not top 100...

Maybe I am confused, but when looking at my webmaster tools ranking, it will often they say I will be listed as #3 and it will be only an image on my site that is ranked by google images. No actual text SERP listing for me.

So definitely check the google image results that are shown.

Could it be that too many exact anchor text links prevents "blue widgets" for ranking,

Yes, it could, in my opinion.

I know we aren't supposed to give site-specific / personal advice on the forums. So I will try to keep this within the TOS so it provides a benefit to everyone.

Really think about how many people would actually link to your site using exact match keywords. My guess is that for a local service company, not really a whole lot of them. Most are going to use the business trade name, or some sort of variation, or an address, or some other anchor (like "these guys", "this business",) or something like that.

Maybe you can look through your link reports at all the links that you DIDN'T create yourself and determine how many people actually used exact match anchor text when linking to you. My guess is it would be a tiny amount.

[aakk9999]

First of all, my rankings in webmater tools don't reflect real searches, I'm talking of by 100's

I think this indicates highly personalised results, and visitors who had that personalised results had your site ranking high.

For other visitors, for the same KW search the site did not show at all, hence the low rankings (e.g. page 10) did not impact the calculated average position.

This could possibly be verified by getting information on your site's number of impressions for that keyword. For example, if the number of impressions are only a fraction of the number of monthly estimated searches, then your site showed rarely, but where it did showed, it was showed quite high.

[Wilburforce]

@Oimachi2

"blue widget" ranks #3
"blue widgets" ranks #300

One of my site's informational pages (Title Widgets, H1 The Widget) that was in the top 3 positions for Widget and Widgets was hit by the first Penguin. Singular dropped 10 pages and plural more like 100 pages.

@Planet13

Maybe you can look through your link reports at all the links that you DIDN'T create yourself and determine how many people actually used exact match anchor text when linking to you. My guess is it would be a tiny amount.

I had many links to that page (*none* posted by me or under my control), nearly all of them bona fide links citing my page as a reference on the subject. Nearly all of the used Widgets - also a more common search term - as anchor text. Whether that was because of the Title or simply because that is probably the most common term in use I don't know, but certainly a lot of real people used identical anchor-text to refer to that page.

The page has never fully recovered (FWIW it is now on page 2 for The Widget, and on page 5 for Widgets).

The effect is page-specific, term-specific, different for singular and plural, and anchor-text is strongly implicated as a cause.

[Oimachi2]

Ok so I guess I have to go delete the plural form anchor text then?