Need Phd. In Search engines....

My experience with a "lack of listing" regarding an old web site I
developed makes me wonder about the results I get when I search for
stuff.

I created a website for a town. In this example
http://www.TownNameStateName.com. This site is all about the town
(named in the URL). It describes the town, its history, the schools,
pictures and has about 40 pages. All of the pages do a relatively good
job of using the town name in the text. Designed to be useful not
attract search engines. A human would look at this and recognize that
this is the most relevant search target for anyone who searched for
"TownName StateName"

So from a seach engine/human point of view - this would be the site
that would have the most relevant information abou this town. However,
the site has been up for 5 years and still has no ranking in Google.
Heck FindAFlorist.com is ranked 14th!!! What the heck do they have to
do with a city/town? Google even ranks single pages of some kid in
college who is from that town and mentions it once!.

I did this town site for free and don't really care how high it ranks
but it makes me realize how crappy and manufactured search results can
often be. I'm just glad I don't have a cell phone biz or something and
have to fight with this "magic" to get listed.

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 13:27:16 +0200, ZRexRider <jerryg (AT) ptd (DOT) net> wrote:

I created a website for a town. In this example
http://www.TownNameStateName.com. This site is all about the town
(named in the URL). It describes the town, its history, the schools,
pictures and has about 40 pages. All of the pages do a relatively good
job of using the town name in the text. Designed to be useful not
attract search engines. A human would look at this and recognize that
this is the most relevant search target for anyone who searched for
"TownName StateName"

Just using a keyword in text is not enough. Google is about links to
your page. The idea behind is - if the page is interesting and on subject,
it will be valued as such by netters and will be linked from other pages.
No links, no visibility.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com
http://www.chembuddy.com/?left=BATE&...ion_equilibria
http://www.chembuddy.com/?left=CASC&...n_calcul ator

On 29 Oct 2005 04:27:16 -0700, "ZRexRider" <jerryg (AT) ptd (DOT) net> wrote:

My experience with a "lack of listing" regarding an old web site I
developed makes me wonder about the results I get when I search for
stuff.

I created a website for a town. In this example
http://www.TownNameStateName.com. This site is all about the town
(named in the URL). It describes the town, its history, the schools,
pictures and has about 40 pages. All of the pages do a relatively good
job of using the town name in the text. Designed to be useful not
attract search engines. A human would look at this and recognize that
this is the most relevant search target for anyone who searched for
"TownName StateName"

So from a seach engine/human point of view - this would be the site
that would have the most relevant information abou this town. However,
the site has been up for 5 years and still has no ranking in Google.
Heck FindAFlorist.com is ranked 14th!!! What the heck do they have to
do with a city/town? Google even ranks single pages of some kid in
college who is from that town and mentions it once!.

I did this town site for free and don't really care how high it ranks
but it makes me realize how crappy and manufactured search results can
often be. I'm just glad I don't have a cell phone biz or something and
have to fight with this "magic" to get listed.

How many inbound links does it have? What's in their anchor text?

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ seo (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
Elvis does my SEO

"ZRexRider" <jerryg (AT) ptd (DOT) net> wrote:

I did this town site for free and don't really care how high it ranks
but it makes me realize how crappy and manufactured search results can
often be.

Weird, my personal site is also done for free, and it ranks good.

If you give a URL we can check what's wrong.

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
or have them custom made
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

__/ [Big Bill] on Saturday 29 October 2005 13:13 \__

On 29 Oct 2005 04:27:16 -0700, "ZRexRider" <jerryg (AT) ptd (DOT) net> wrote:

My experience with a "lack of listing" regarding an old web site I
developed makes me wonder about the results I get when I search for
stuff.

I created a website for a town. In this example
http:// www.TownNameStateName. com. This site is all about the town
(named in the URL). It describes the town, its history, the schools,
pictures and has about 40 pages. All of the pages do a relatively good
job of using the town name in the text. Designed to be useful not
attract search engines. A human would look at this and recognize that
this is the most relevant search target for anyone who searched for
"TownName StateName"

So from a seach engine/human point of view - this would be the site
that would have the most relevant information abou this town. However,
the site has been up for 5 years and still has no ranking in Google.
Heck FindAFlorist.com is ranked 14th!!! What the heck do they have to
do with a city/town? Google even ranks single pages of some kid in
college who is from that town and mentions it once!.

I did this town site for free and don't really care how high it ranks
but it makes me realize how crappy and manufactured search results can
often be. I'm just glad I don't have a cell phone biz or something and
have to fight with this "magic" to get listed.

How many inbound links does it have? What's in their anchor text?

Exactly. No links would make it an island. When my personal site resided
in a subdirectory on another domain (danielsorogon.com), it was barely ev-
er crawled.

Also, check to see if all pages been indexed? If not, what proportion
would you say reached the Google index? Try searching for:

site:http:// www.TownNameStateName. com (collapse 2 spaces)

Remember that search engines do not get a list of sites from ICANN. Many
sites are parked domains with repeated references to the host or some
sponsored directories. You must convince the search engine that your site
is part of cyberspace, i.e. a worthy part of information for the communi-
ty. With all the spam content sites out there, search engines must be pru-
dent.

Roy

Thanks very much. I realize most of these problems are a result of
search engines getting spoofed or spammed. It just made it clear to me
that there is a wealth of relevant information out there that the
search engines fail to find and when I'm the "searcher", I won't be
getting the best results. I understand how "links to a site" could
indicate interest but is going to be less accurate providing relevant
information and much harder to do since somebody else has to be willing
to improve my search.

Since the site was done for "free" I didn't put much effort in baiting
the search engines. Simply made sure the keywords were used in the
text (not overused) and then submitted them to many search engines
(manually through the search engine 'add url' interface. I started
thinking about this more because I have a few "paid" sites to do and
they're going to have some expectations. Makes me a little nervous
when 1. The rules are not necessarlily logical and 2. You won't be able
to see the results of your efforts for weeks or months.

I appreciate all of your feedback and will start working on my Phd.
today.
;-)

Thanks

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 13:23:34 +0100, ZRexRider <jerryg (AT) ptd (DOT) net> wrote:

they're going to have some expectations. Makes me a little nervous
when (...) You won't be able
to see the results of your efforts for weeks or months.

If your site is older then about 9 month/1 year and is reasonably linked
to, effects of the changes made to the site (so called on site
omptimization)
are visible after few days.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com - chemical calculators for labs and education
BATE - program for pH calculations
CASC - Concentration and Solution Calculator
pH lectures - guide to hand pH calculation with examples