Poison Words For Google? What is the current list

Brett did a thread - any updates to that?

[Arctrust]

Hey Guys:

I am new here, but would like some help with a current list of Poison Words for G.

I remember seeing a thread started by Brett but that was pretty old....

Is anyone aware of the "assumed" current list and what would be helpful.... why a word would be on it?

I think this would be an interesting refresher.

Thank you!
ARC

[werty]

This is probably the thread you are looking for:
[webmasterworld.com...]

And it sure is old...I would like to see a new list as well.

I know google will now remove certain phrases: how do I, where do I, how can I...

[Arctrust]

Werty:

That is interesting.... can you expand what you mean by remove?

Thanks
ARC

[antrat]

I doubt the list has changed as the words are simply very common English words reffered to as "Stop Words" see: [google.com...]

[werty]

arctrust, look at this:
[google.com...]

The following words and phrases are very common and were not included in your search: "how can i" an.

[Stefan]

Link/s might be a poison word now, wrt backlinks. I'd read reports of it here starting months ago, doubted it, and then eventually saw my own PR5 "links.htm" page disappear as a backlink for the sites it links to. My incoming links aren't generally from "links" pages so I haven't been affected. It might not be totally poisonous, but it seems to be at least partially toxic.

[uncle_bob]

Is there a poison word list for adsense available as well?
i.e. words that will trigger PSAs

[Arctrust]

Stefan:

I belive you are on the right track with your last post.

Poison words such as "LINKS" and I think "FORUM".... produce unfavorable results in PR and ranking alogos...

Therefore, I we have any of those words on our pages and are totally unaware - we might be actually harming our results unknowingly....

Has anyone heard anything further?

As I originally mentioned, Brett had assembled something a long while ago and we wanted to see if we could get more on this topic as far as G is concerened.

Thanks
ARC

[antrat]

I have yet to see any evidence that "Links" and "Forum" are viewed badly from Google. It simply makes no sense to do this and Google algo etc is far more complicated than preventing link pages named "Links" etc. If you do a allinurl:LINKS there are millions of results with the very top one having a PR of 8!

As far as I know the *only* filters are the ones searchers can turn off/on, like Adult content etc. The "poison words" that the original question asked are "stop words".

[Stefan]

antrat, a few months ago I would have agreed with you. Now, I strongly suspect that pages with the word link/s in the title, text and/or url are downweighted wrt the PR they will pass on.

Arctrust's question seemed rather generic to me, i.e. those words that can affect rankings, whether directly or by the PR they can pass on... "links" is one that is somewhat toxic, (perhaps, not 100%, imho, etc). "Forum", I don't know about because I don't watch those serps. "Travel" might be seen as toxic by some here. "Real Estate" also. There are some here who believe that there is a dictionary of .com kw's that Google is now paying special attention to... those could all be seen as poison. It's a good idea for a thread anyway, man.

[shrirch]

From a few searches that I've done, I'm seeing words like 'in' being included in or atleast influencing the search results.

In my case 'in' is causing a filter or two to be removed and is showing rather strange results.

Stop words are fairly different from 'poison' words which I would speculate cause your site to be categorised as spam or unsafe.

Would I be right in saying

In relationships to search results
-- Stop words: Common words which do not influence a result

-- Poison words: Have a negative influence or classification on your site / page. They poison your site or page.

-- Damp words: Words like 'links' and 'guestbook' which may or may not cause PR to pass, or might dampen your results depending on some on-page and off-page factors and are most probably algorithmic.

Adwords / Adsense
-- Adsense Related: Politically incorrect words deemed as being inappropriate for advertising and turn off adwords even if there is a match for the broader page.

[Arctrust]

shrirch:

You are correct with your classifications....

Now does anyone know what the current POISON words are ..... (or are perceived to be) and what is the effect for G?

Thank you all!

ARC

[antrat]

I can see no evidence of any "poison words". Searching for "links" bring up hundreds of millions of pages as does others that have been mentioned. The backlinks on the top result for "Links" shows a page with a PR 9! and the Links page is PR 8. Certainly not proof, but if someone makes a claim I would think the onus is on them to prove it? Not vice versa

As far as I am aware the number of pages returned for searches which include so called "poison words" are the same. The positions have certainly changed, but that's an ongoing thing and for very site that moves down another moves up.

There is just no proof out there. I tend to keep an open mind until proven one way or another.

[MHes]

If you have the words 'gambling' or 'casino' on a page then obviously you may rank well for these words. But, if you have the words 'childrens toys' on the same page, will google not rank you well for this search?

[tribal]

That depends heavily on incoming link text and general page theme. If you only mention "casino" once, but have lots of content on toys and related incoming link text, you'd probably rank bad on "casino", but you might rank good on toy-related searches, depening on your PR.