Jeeve's ways are mysterious...

When I type in a search for my website as a test on Ask.com (chicago
carpentry, remodeling, etc.) the first thing I get is a whole page with
links to "Tim Murphy Carpentry," at least 10 separate ones, each one
to a different page on the site. What could explain that? Irish-Chicago-
Political clout?

BUB 209 wrote:

When I type in a search for my website as a test on Ask.com (chicago
carpentry, remodeling, etc.) the first thing I get is a whole page with
links to "Tim Murphy Carpentry," at least 10 separate ones, each one
to a different page on the site. What could explain that? Irish-Chicago-
Political clout?

No, just lack of domain clustering. For most initial ranking
algorithms, a page is a page is a page, regardless of whether they're
all from one site or 5 million. The same algorithms are applied, and if
a site owner has done a good job keying his content to specific
keywords/phrases, (and/or has been evil trying to manipulate, but let's
stay where the sun's shining for this) then it's not unusual for many,
(or indeed, all) of his pages to outrank every other content source on
the web.

Back in late '99 / early '00, to answer complaints from folks about
this precise issue, most SE's implemented domain clustering, (there are
other names for it) where the highest-ranked page for a given domain,
(/site) is displayed, with all other pages effectively removed from the
result set, often with a "More from this site" link attached. Like
everything else, especially in search, there are good arguments for and
against, but in this case, it's just that Teoma, (the algorithmic
subsidiary of Ask Jeeves) hasn't implemented this feature and/or Ask has
decided not to use on the Ask.com website. In the interests of time,
your efforts are probably much better spent optimizing your results on
other SE's.

Hope that helps,

Dylan

Hope that helps,

I was hoping your answer would be
something like what it was, and not
an affirmative on the luck of the
Chicago Irish, now I have something
to work with. Thanks.