The Wonder & Mystery of Google

[cgilvarry]

I'm new to this discussion forum and am sure you have been asked this over and over again but I have to ask one more time. Basically I want to know why a site with better link popularity and a better page rank, than a site on page one, appears on page six of google's results.

[Marketing Guy]

Welcome to WW CGilvarry! :)

Good question!

Why does Monster.com outrank Microsoft.com for the term "jobs"? Microsoft has the higher PR.....

Basically high PR + more backlinks does not equal high rankings.

A PR4 site may be number 1 for a term because it is more relevant (according to Googles algo) than a PR6.

That's just the way it is. :)

For a similar search term, the PR6 may be number 1 and the PR will be on page 6.

Scott :)

[John_Caius]

Results for a particular keyword search are dependent on how well the two pages are optimised for that specific keyword:

1) keyword in anchor text of inbound links
2) keyword in title
3) keyword in H1 text
4) keyword in other text
5) overall PR of page

are just some of the important factors, probably in that order.

<added>

So if I wrote "silvery sparkly blue green widget monkeys" in the title and content of a page, I'd probably rank number one if you searched for "silvery sparkly blue green widget monkeys" in Google, simply because my page would be better optimised for that term than a Microsoft page that didn't have those words on it, or for that matter any other page. Hence it's easy to rank well for an obscure keyword even if your PR is low as the competition is weak. It's very hard to rank well for a competitive keyword as many other high PR sites are optimising for the same word.

[annej]

I've been in this forum for some time and this has been discussed again and again and I still don't feel like I have a good answer.

It can't be backlinks or page rank so it must be something about how well the site (page) is optomized. Remember it's just the page that Google is looking at.

By looking at the sites ahead of me I've gotten some ideas that helped. Most importantly getting the key word in the title and shortening the title.

On one key word I've made it to 11 which is frustrating because I'd love to get it on the first page. Now there are only two sites above me that I don't understand why they are there. One has practically nothing on the page and the other seems more normal.

[John_Caius]

Backlinks are a factor, but specifically the anchor text of that link. I have a page that comes up for a particular keyword that doesn't appear anywhere on the page any more, but it does appear once in the anchor text of an inbound link.

Check the source code of the one with no content to see whether they're using CSS absolute positioning to position text off the visible area of the screen. Use link:www.theirdomain.com to check the anchor text of their incoming links.