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We've plenty of incoming links, but a phrase search a la "keyword by ourname" (which is the most common link text for us) produces just a few results (where the company's name is misspelled/hyphenated).
OTOH, searching for +kw +by +ourname produces all pages linking to our site, proves that all of them are indexed.
As a result of being blacklisted(?), we moved from #2 to #23 since G seems to ignore all incoming links. PR is still 8.
Anybody out there with the same problem? Hints? Ideas why this could happen?
we moved from #2 to #23
That's not a penalty, that's just the normal bouncing around.
Fasten your seatbelt if your inbound links are unstable.
High Quality Stable Links are very important to cultivate. You have to keep in mind that those who are linking to you may have
What happens to site that is linking to the site that is linking to the site that is linking to the site that is linking to your site will affect you too.
Everyone is Getting Better
There are other sites that want to be on top, too. A good optimization effort can take many months of effort, and you may be seeing the fruit of someone else's hard work.
Google Adds More Pages Every Month
Google adds more pages in general, but also those from your competition, and those from newer entrants. This is a moving target.
our site has been stable on #2 since months, and never lower than #10 in the recent years. Sure everybody wants to get on top, but in fact all others still rank as usual.
What I'm still looking for is an explanation for the weird difference between phrase search and a +KW +companyname search and what we might have done wrong ...
Peter
our site has been stable on #2 since months,
Stability is an Illusion
As I said before, it's a moving target. Everything is unstable. No one can guarantee a top position, most no one lives in the same position every month.
I've experienced the same thing, and have seen the same thing happen to other sites that previously dominated the results.
If you've optimized without using "tricks" then what you are seeing is the natural bounce, the natural instability, part of which can also be attributed to the algo change. If that's the case, what you should focus on is not what you did wrong, but on what you may not have done.
Misspelled Name
You are focusing on the misspelling of your name? How many pages have you optimized for the misspelling? How many links from within your site are pointing toward this doorway page for the misspelling? Do you have a link from the index page to the misspelling doorway page?
Sliding from #2 to #23 doesn't sound like a penalty- it sounds like it could be an algo change.
PR isn't everything, either. A PR8 doesn't guarantee you anything: Remember, there are around 100 elements to the Google algo for which they test for relevance.
Here's a very interesting thread about Surviving Algo Changes [webmasterworld.com] that speaks directly about this.
>> You are focusing on the misspelling of your name?
Of course not. I tried to explain that a phrase search "KW by ourname" just produces 4 results. These results exclusively contain our misspelled name - external pages with correct spelling don't show up.
OTOH a +KW +by +ourname search yields all external pages (1000+) linking to us with the exact phrase from above.
My conclusion: A phrase search containing our company name triggers some kind of blacklist mechanism - which might also be responsible for all links containing ourname are being ignored too.
Let's assume that the name of your company is, "IBM" and that your keyword phrase is, "personal computers."
Now, let's assume that many companies refer to you as "Big Blue." Not only do they refer to you as "Big Blue" but their anchor text also says "Big Blue."
Now, using the above scenario, explain your circumstance.
I think it may be clearer for me.
OK, here we go (and many thanks for your patience btw):
The phrase search "Computers by IBM" suddenly results in only 4 (external) pages and the IBM page itself. Those external pages have "Computers by I-B-M" as anchor text. No page containing the anchor text "Computers by IBM" shows up.
But: A search for +Computers +by +IBM results in 1,000+ customers pages linking to IBM with anchor text Computers by IBM.
Even with just "Computers by" the IBM customers will show up, only if "IBM" is part of the phrase things are weird.
Got it? It's obvious to me that there's a special treatment for phrases and / or anchor text containing "IBM".
Peter
Your situation sounds more like the links aren't being counted, or they fall below the pr4 threshold. Are the 1000 customer links on 1000 web sites, or on like 100 web sites? If it's on 1000 web sites, that's a problem.
There's been a certain amount of weirdness going on with links, and partner pages having been pr-zeroed or gray barred. Some folks are leaning toward the theory that this database is one from February and that it's not recognizing recent changes, and/or the toolbar is now showing actual pr instead of guesstimates and people are now for the first time seeing the actual pr of pages, and that Google isn't seeing a large amount of links.
For instance, I noticed that the partner page for IBM is gray-barred, but it's a recent addition.
As I said above, unless you've attracted media notoriety in relation to Google, and/or have influence in webwide matters, I don't think your the victim of a manual tweak.
Collateral damage from Google's algo? Possible.
Does anybody else have an opinion on this?
So IT IS a problem - they are on 1000 web sites ...
>> As I said above, unless you've attracted media notoriety in relation to Google, and/or have influence in webwide matters, I don't think your the victim of a manual tweak.
I wish it was not a manual tweak - alas i'm afraid it is one. Even with february's index our site wouldn't slip from #2 to #23, since all links have been established step by step between 1996 and today and we've been #2 on SERPs since 2002.
>> attracted media notoriety
Can't believe that a small German site can attract Google's attention. Our influence on the web definitely is minimal, even if I take into account that there's a sort of "SE watch" on our pages. Google ranks very well there, why should they penalize us?
So what would you suggest? Talk to Google? From what I see in various messages they simply will ignore my complaint - or worse, penalize us for "nastiness" ... ;-)
I am pretty clueless here ...
many thanks, you might have put me on the right track! Inspired by your post, I tried the phrase search "for webmasters". Guess what? No site containing the word "webmasters" will show up, you'll just find occurences of "web masters".
G seems to auto-split phrase searches containing "web" and is afterwards unable to find occurences of the original phrase. This theory perfectly matches my own scenario, since my company's name also contains the term "web", like in "webwidgets".
Did we really discover a bug? Maybe many dropped rankings reported earlier are related to this issue ...
Peter
In any case your asumption: "we moved from #2 to #23 since G seems to ignore all incoming links. PR is still 8." seems very unlikely. If Google would have reduced the links counting to your site it would neither remain a PR8, not would it still rank at #23. You'd be nowhere.
just to make this issue a bit clearer: Have a phrase search for "Google Information for Webmasters" - but don't expect to find the page we all read over and over again ...
Peter
I submitted the phrase search bug to G and they fixed it within a few hours. ;-)
Alas, there's no effect on our actual ranking within SERPS yet.
Fixed it means what exactly - you get all the backlinks now?
>> Fixed it means what exactly - you get all the backlinks now?
Fixed means phrase search is not taking special care of words containing "web" anymore.
Hence our customer's pages will show up when performing a phrase search for the most common anchor text - alas the fix does NOT have any effect on link:www.ourdomain.com (just 25% compared to phrase search) or ranking on SERPS (yet?).
