McDar Experiment

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 7:19 am

Hello Bob and Foxy,

Thank you Bob for the email and invite to this forum! I just signed up.

Bob suggested in his email that I add a column for PR as well as making a function that would allow for some way to export or save the results.

Actually, I have to admit that I originally was going to make the last column PR not the anchor text results. There are two reasons why I did not.

First and foremost, I was struggling with calculating the new checksum. To get the PR rating for a particular page, you must supply a number (checksum) to Google. The checksum number is found by applying a mathmatical equation and using a table to convert the alphanumeric values of a domain name into a numeric value. Anyway, I don't have it figured out yet.

In the meantime, I added the anchor text rating. Once I saw that that value seemed to tell a much bigger story, I decided to save myself some time and forget about the PR.

Believe me when I tell you that I did a great many searches that resulted in sites in the top ten results with relatively low PR. The number one position in our own main keyword is PR5, 1800 pages, 119 backlinks, BUT number 1 for anchor text! They beat out other sites that had them beat in all the other fields EXCEPT anchor text.

I have found that the anchor text ranking plays a much stronger role as the keywords become much more competitve.

ANYWAY... I will certainly add the PR column if and when I can figure out the calculations.

As far as having some sort of export or save feature, I think that is an excellent idea! I will ponder this and see what I can come up with.

Thanks again - Great forum!
Caryl

It gives you a quick look at the specs of your top ten competitors. You can see what you need to do about the number of backlinks to compete.

Bob, Here are the results for one minor keyword that I have not yet really targeted...
Position:
6. 1page, 6Backlinks, Anchor2
(us)
301. 244pages, 124Backlinks, Anchor79

It wasn't the number of backlinks that got this page a number 6 position in the results. It was the anchor text.

Oh, and by the way, I did look up their PR and found they are PR5. We are PR6.

Caryl

Foxy

Apr 5th 2004, 8:11 am

Hiya

I got real pissed with the other forum when it changed from the Irish to the other team and I was only convinced to stay by many [but some people thought I was carping which I wasn't] - this is well before Shawn came along - but when Shawn started with his email forum indicating that he might consider the full thing I was there giving support.

Due credit to Shawn, and you, we have some wonderful tools and, here, a more technical and useful forum than the other and so I keep supporting .

So thankyou for joining here too!

The idea of the PR would be really interesting as well as the anchor - only because I was gobsmacked by the results I saw:

1. Backlinks are nearly non existent [or far less than I was believing they were]!!!!!!!
2. Anchor sometimes is a higher position than actual
3. which means that the allinurl must carry a higher weight
4. which coincides with the recent reporting of words in runtogethers being hilited and therefore of importance

Which all means I'm about to go and have another glass of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc from NZ

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 8:50 am

Hi Ya Foxy,

Thanks for the welcome! I too have decided to find some other forum to "hang my hat in". This forum is a breath of fresh air!

It is great to see folks freely post questions and answers without a few people dominating and ridiculing... Unfortunately, it dosn't take long for the trolls to take over a forum and run off the other members. nuf said.

I too was flabbergasted by the results of this tool. As soon as I got the code written and ran it for the first time, I couldn't believe my eyes. In many of our keywords, we have the stronger PR, more pages, even more backlinks, BUT rate lower in the allinanchor: results for the keyword.

Since seeing this, I have started a campaign soliciting links with very targeted anchor text. It seems that we improve in rating with every new link we acquire.

Since I have been virtually pulling my hair out since Florida, trying to improve our ranking, I am greatly relieved to find something that is actually providing results.

Our main competitor has a domain name like www.keywordkeywordandkeyword.com. No spaces, dashes, or underscores. Although they are number one in the results for keyword keyword and number one for allinanchor:Keyword Keyword, they are NO PLACE TO BE FOUND for allinurl:Keyword Keyword. It is due to this that I believe G is not yet able to, or at least does not, find the runtogethers in domain names.

Caryl

compar

Apr 5th 2004, 8:53 am

Which all means I'm about to go and have another glass of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc from NZ

Ah! Now your talking, NewZealand and Australia wines. First class in my book.

digitalpoint

Apr 5th 2004, 8:58 am

It is great to see folks freely post questions and answers without a few people dominating and ridiculing... Unfortunately, it dosn't take long for the trolls to take over a forum and run off the other members. nuf said.

Just takes good Master of the Universe and Moderators to enforce things. :)

- Shawn

hulkster

Apr 5th 2004, 9:02 am

Mcdar/Caryl,

Just another atta-boy for 'ya - I remember looking at this tool a little while back and yea, it takes a little bit of time to understand it - maybe add a link/explanation to explain AllInAnchor - note that Google no longer shows it on their "operators" page and you MUST lower-case it.

But definately provides some insights into the Google "secret sauce" and further reinforces the importance of anchor text.

Thanx again for sharing and thanx for joining this forum - Shawn has done an amazing job with his tools and hopefully the signal-noise ratio will stay decent in this forum and the trolls will stay away.

alek

Foxy

Apr 5th 2004, 9:33 am

Yep there were tooooo many of those over there - my pet hate!

But when it comes to "putting it down the gullet" I can't have toooo many at all

Funny that!

Ah! Now your talking, NewZealand and Australia wines. First class in my book.

We need a wine section Shawn - just for the finer things in life :D

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 9:39 am

Thanks for the welcome, hopefully Shawn will be able to keep this forum a "Troll free zone".

alek,

Thanks for the suggestions! I will see what I can come up with.

Foxy

Apr 5th 2004, 9:40 am

They need to be watched though

eg french property

No7 www.frenchpropertylinks.com with the frenchproperty hilited

and

No 9 www.le-guide.com/frenchproperty with the frenchproperty hilited

so my reckoning is that it is being factored - we just aint seen it all yet!

compar

Apr 5th 2004, 10:17 am

The tool gives some rather unbelievable results from time to time. I didn't do an actual search on Google to confirm these results but look at this report.

(I tried to attach a copy of a web page but couldn't figure out how to covert the page to one of the acceptable attachment formats????? )

So to see the results use www.yourfriendlypharmacy.com as the URL and 'order prescription drugs' as the search term.

www.medcohealth.com is reported in position 5 with

1200 pages
0 backlinks
59th place in allinanchor

I am rather incredulous that that site could really rank #5 with those specs.

(And Shawn not being able to attach a copy of a web page is the first deficiency I've found with this forum software. Is there a way to cope with this?)

digitalpoint

Apr 5th 2004, 10:20 am

(And Shawn not being able to attach a copy of a web page is the first deficiency I've found with this forum software. Is there are way to cope with this?)

You just trying to attach .html file?

- Shawn

compar

Apr 5th 2004, 10:30 am

You just trying to attach .html file?

- Shawn

I did and it is not one of the acceptable file extentions the acceptable extentions are:
Valid file extensions: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg pdf png psd txt zip

Back to the Analysis. McDar, is one of the premises of this analysis that Google orders the results of a 'allinanchor:' search from the site with the greatest number of occurences of the anchor text to the least?

Because I just checked a manual 'allinanchor:' search and it appears that sites returned for the search are in random order.

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 10:53 am

Bob,

What has lead you to believe the the allinanchor results are random?

I do not believe the results are random BUT it does seem thay may be calculated by some percentage of total backlinks to a site.

I really do not know how Google sorts allinanchor but I have found the results stable, not random.

digitalpoint

Apr 5th 2004, 11:13 am

I did and it is not one of the acceptable file extentions the acceptable extentions are:
Valid file extensions: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg pdf png psd txt zip

Okay... updated... html and php have been added (and a couple lame extensions removed):

Now supports:
doc gif html jpg pdf php png psd txt zip

- Shawn

compar

Apr 5th 2004, 11:23 am

Ok. Thanks Shawn. So here is the page I wanted to show everyone:

Now if you look at these results my site is in 169th place despite being 7th on the allinanchor search.

So while I agree that I think anchor text is absolutely crucial in getting good placement in the SERPs from you backlinks. I don't think this analysis is giving us what we think it is. I don't think that the sites presented in an allinanchor: search are in any order, and the assumption that a high placement in the allinanchor: SERP indicates a high number of occurences of that keyword as anchortext is invalid.

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 2:10 pm

Bob,

Your results do look wierd! I have no idea what formula Google uses to produce the allinanchor results. But, what ever they use, the order of the results is fairly stable on repeating the search. So, I do not believe they are just organized randomly.

compar

Apr 5th 2004, 2:26 pm

irish_ladie

Apr 5th 2004, 3:07 pm

Hi McDar - great tool - I love it!

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 3:36 pm

Bob,

(?) What are you asking me to do? This is like asking me to list how I think Google should order their results.

I do not now nor have I ever claimed to understand HOW or WHY Google decides to order their results.

I made a tool that gives allinanchor results as Google reports them.

Googles own definition for allinanchor -

"Allinanchor - Google Advanced Operator. Here are a few commands you can use to help examine the web pages of your site.

allinanchor: your keywords

Optimized anchor text is one of the most powerful tools you can use to rank high on Google.

Use the allinanchor command to find out how you rank.

This command will show you how rank based on the Anchor Text of your web page."

actually,
This command will show you how rank based on the Anchor Text of your web page."

Now that I re-read that last line of that quote, it makes no sense...

but that was how Google had it in the Advanced Operators pages.

Hi Irish Ladie,

It's nice to run into folks I know. I wondered where everybody went!

Caryl

Mr T

Apr 5th 2004, 4:23 pm

How about this one?

'Gazumping' for my house buying site. allinanchor list is pretty much top ten on google search.

sarahk

Apr 5th 2004, 5:10 pm

Hi Caryl

A cool tool, thanks.
I just did a check and one of the sites that poped up was:
9. home.earthlink.net 240000 11 21

Interesting numbers because it didn't allow for the subdomain ie home.earthlink.net/~sub/

I don't know if you can accommodate that but it'd be a "nice to have"

Sarah

compar

Apr 5th 2004, 5:53 pm

Bob,

(?) What are you asking me to do? This is like asking me to list how I think Google should order their results.

I think you missunderstand what I've asked. I have simply said the search I did looks wierd. The result of the allinanchor don't look ordered. You were/are of the opinion that they are odrered. So I said give me a search term that you used to get a result that convinced you, or lead you to believe, that the results are ranked according to highest number or percentage of anchor text?

mcdar

Apr 5th 2004, 10:37 pm

Hi Bob,

I still don't think I understand what you are asking.

I have said that I see a high correlation, in highly targeted keywords, between the actual results and the allinanchor results. (Mr. T's list is the closest I've seen)

I have seen that with less competitive keywords, many of the top ten listings are not even in the top 100 allinanchor.

First example: Sleeping Bags (http://www.mcdar.com/directory/sb.htm)

Second example: Queen Size Sleeping Bags (http://www.mcdar.com/directory/qsb.htm)

ALSO NOTE: I added an extra column with the PR for each site to the first example, just for the sake of discussion. (I looked them up by hand)

Compare mcdar.com numbers with those of number 5. www.mountain-equipment.co.uk. Allinanchor is where mcdar.com falls short in this example. All I can say is that since I have made a concerted effort to get backlinks with "sleeping bags" in the anchor text, we have finally started to move up.

Caryl

compar

Apr 6th 2004, 5:37 am

I think you are tending to see what you want the results to indicate. In the Sleeping Bags search look at the site in third place. www.cyber-north.com

It has 15 backlinks in total -- I know that is not necessarly the total number of links -- but you have 124 backlinks. So it is hard for me to conceive that cyber-north.com has so many more links using 'sleeping bags' for anchor text that it ranks 3 and you rank 228.

Logic would indicate that you have 8 times more links than they do. So even if cyber-north had 100% of their links using 'sleeping bags' you would only have to have that term on 15% of you backlinks to beat them. How can they be in third and you in 228 under these circumstances? There has to be something else going on here.

compar

Apr 6th 2004, 5:42 am

Second example: Queen Size Sleeping Bags

Now this result has me really confused. The top line says your site has 124 backlinks, but then when you are listed at #2 in the results it reports your backlinks at 3.

What is all this about? Have I been missing something? Is there a difference between the backlinks reported on the top line for the site you used in the search dialogue and the backlinks reported for sites in the SERPs??????

compar

Apr 6th 2004, 5:57 am

Upon further investigation I see the problem. You are only reporting the root domain of each page in the SERPs for any given search term or keyword. The strange looking numbers don't belong to the domain or home page as one would assume. They belong to some inner page.

I think the results would become more meaningful if you reported the full URL of the pages in the SERPs.

mcdar

Apr 6th 2004, 6:20 am

Hi Bob,

The second column reports the number of links pointing to the page returned in the results. This is not neccessarily the main index page. A mouse over the main website name will reveal which page came up in the actual results.

So, our main index page has 124 backlinks. The page that came up in #2 has 3 reported backlinks pointing to it.

Logic would indicate that you have 8 times more links than they do. So even if cyber-north had 100% of their links using 'sleeping bags' you would only have to have that term on 15% of you backlinks to beat them. How can they be in third and you in 228 under these circumstances? There has to be something else going on here.

Bob, please understand that in making this tool, I in no way intended to say that placement in the serps was totally dependent on your allinanchor placement. Both you and I know that Googles algo is MUCH more complicated than that!

AGAIN, the tool simply returns information (Googles own results) in a table so those results can be compared side by side. IT ONLY REPORTS GOOGLE'S RESULTS.

I don't know what the results mean anymore than you do. I am also trying to make sense of the data. Anyone who is at all familiar with statistics, understands that if there is a high correlation between two results, it is worth looking into. BUT, correlation DOES not prove cause and effect.

There is a high correlation between the moon being out and darkness. Yet, it would be wrong to conclude that the moon causes darkness, wouldn't it.

This is just a tool that presents Google's results in such a way that it MAY hold some kind of clue. Then again, it may not. I really don't know.

mcdar

Apr 6th 2004, 6:30 am

Bob,

I am sorry that I have not made it clear on the tool. In the first column of the results, it shows the main website url. This was done because many of the pages returned were too long to actually fit in the field.

So, what shows in the field is just the main site url. A mouse over the url will show you the actual page returned.

As indicated in the ledgend,
- The "Pages" column is the total pages for the entire site.
- The backlinks reported are number of backlinks to the page returned in the results.
- The allinanchor is the first occurance of the site in the top 100 allinanchor results.

compar

Apr 6th 2004, 11:02 am

Some how it seems that you think I'm attacking the tools. I'm not. I'm only trying to understand the results and what they may indicate.

And BTW you have it wrong. The moon doesn't cause darkness. It is darkness that causes the moon. When it gets dark the moon becomes visible. Cause and effect.

Let me say this first. I have checked you results manually upon a number of occasions and they are always correct or accurate. Now the the question is what can we learn from them or what do they indicate?

Here are some of things I think I have learned from them.

1. I think a lot of people, including myself, have always concentrated on and assumed that the home page was the most important page to optimize. From your results it would appear that Google frequently returns interior pages and these pages frequently have very few links pointing directly at them.

Possible conclusion: If you had a few anchor text specific links pointed at your internal pages you could probably rank very well. Even with sleeping bags, which I guess is a medium popular search term, the pages that show in the SERP do not have many backlinks.

2. To search on one's home page may be misleading. For instance you have 124 backlinks to your home page but only 3 pointing to the page the shows up for "queen size sleeping bags". So what is the correlation between that and the actual links that the pages in the SERP have. I would guess none.

Possible conclusion: A more meaning full results page will involve searching on the actual URL of the page that you want displayed for a particular search term.

I've run out of other ideas and possible conclusions. I'd be interested in what others think.

mcdar

Apr 7th 2004, 8:45 am

Hi Bob,

The search on the "Queen Size Sleeping Bags" was an attempt to show that less competitve searches do not neccessarily show allinanchor playing a big role (or displaying any high correlation).

However, in looking over the results it is interesting to evaluate the top 3 sites.

Example (http://www.mcdar.net/qsb.htm)

If I add PR values plus the total reported backlinks from HotBot, Google, Yahoo, Alltheweb, AltaVista and MSN. It does tell more of a story here (maybe)

mcdar

Apr 7th 2004, 9:53 am

I think you may have hit on something here Bob.

It may be far easier to optimize a new page to place high in the serps than to "change" direction of a current page.

My point being that, the main page of our site has PR6 and 124 Backlinks. HOWEVER, out of the 124 backlinks, a very low percentage of the links contain "Sleeping Bags" in the anchor text. To turn that "theme" around would take a great many new links with the keywords in the anchor.

I have always "assumed" that your main page carried the greatest weight and there fore the the greater chance of breaking into the top ten. BUT maybe not!

If I created a new page and linked to it directly from the main page, it would soon have a PR5 (not bad). If I started out from the beginning with ALL links to this new page containing the anchor text then allinanchor should rank quite high as well. Then all I would need to do is be sure to acquire several backlinks to that new page with > PR4. This should get me much closer to the top.

So, I am off to experiment! ( I will continue my quest with the main page but focus on the new page as well).

I will report in with results.

Caryl

compar

Apr 7th 2004, 10:31 am

Caryl,

I'm not sure the page has to be new. Why not take the existing sleeping bags page and just increase the number of links to it with the appropriate anchor text.

Some people have talked for years about optimizing every page in your site and I have always assumed that this was not necessary. But your results tend to show that for all but the most competitive areas you should indeed be optimizing the specific page with the item content.

If you do some checking for very competitive terms like 'buy viagra' for instance, you will find that all the pages in the top ten are index pages. Because in this case the item is competitive enough that people are dedicating entire sites to it.

But it is doubtful that anyone has dedicated a site to sleeping bags, so in this case you should optimize the sleeping bag page within your site, and by the looks of things you wouldn't need many backlinks to Google bomb that page to the top.

mcdar

Apr 7th 2004, 12:45 pm

Right on Bob!

However, those pages are actually for a single item! I do already have a page that does well for one brand of Sleeping Bags, but if someone is looking in general, I would like them to land on a page that shows more than one brand.

I just picked up a new line so I am going to make a page that includes everything. It really shouldn't take long to establish the new page within the exsisting site.

I'll be sure to give a blow by blow as to the progress.

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 7th 2004, 2:54 pm

OK - New page up!

It has two internal links pointing to the page. One PR6 and one PR5
It has 5 external links pointing to it. All PR5s.

Now, wait for spidering and indexing.

compar

Apr 7th 2004, 3:02 pm

Caryl,

What is the URL? I'll put up 45 links all PR5 or PR6 to it and we will see if we can drive it to the top of the SERP. I assume the anchor text should be 'sleeping bags'. If we drive it into first place we will talk about how you can return the favour.

digitalpoint

Apr 7th 2004, 3:05 pm

We giving away free links now? {I'll wait in line} haha j/k

- Shawn

compar

Apr 7th 2004, 3:15 pm

I already gave you a free link. Not 45 mind you, but still a good one.

I think this is an interesting experiment. Your Keyword Suggestion tool reports just over 700 searches per pay on 'sleeping bags'. That's not [b[high[/b] volume but it is still substantial. It will be interesting to see if we can Google bomb this page to the top with approximately 50 links with the same anchor text. If we can it will answer a lot of questions that are being discussed in various threads on this forum right now.

If we can't then it is back to the drawing board for many of us.

mcdar

Apr 7th 2004, 9:30 pm

Wow Bob, what an offer!!!!!!!!

It will be interesting to see what would happen.

The page url is http://www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm

Thanks!

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 4:50 am

OK, Googlebot found the page this morning.

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 4:55 am

Wow Bob, what an offer!!!!!!!!

It will be interesting to see what would happen.

The page url is http://www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm

Thanks!

Caryl

I'll put up the links right away, but I'd suggest changing your title. I think "Sleeping Bags from McDar" would probably be more effective.

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 5:02 am

Ok the links are in place. Look on the bottom of the page at The InfoPool (http://www.compar.com/infopool/index.html) and on the bottom of each of the articles included in the InfoPool.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 5:22 am

Bob,

I checked the link on the bottom of the page you linked to and the link did not go to the page. (page not found error)

Could be because you have a "/" after sleeping-bags.htm

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 5:52 am

Thanks I'll fix it. I just cut and pasted that in.

Try it now.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 6:00 am

PERFECT!!

Thanks so much, Bob. I am really excited to see what kind of results this experiment will yield.

Caryl

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 6:08 am

This thread is wandering all over the place. It has now really become -- How to Optimize an Internal Page. On that vein let's talk about titles.

I am a huge proponent of backlinks and generally devalue the importance of on-page issues. But there is no doubt in my mind that the most important on-page item from Google's point of view is the title.

Therefore, I would argue that if you are optimizing an inner page for a particular keyword, or product in this case, you should put that keyword first in your title. What you want to be indexed for is 'sleeping bags'. So I would change the title as I suggested earlier. Concentrate on branding your company name, if you wish, on the home page, but on product pages use the product name first.

I would change the title to 'Sleeping Bags : McDar Outdoor Gear" or 'Sleeping Bags from McDar Outdoor Gear". Your objective with this page is to sell sleeping bags. You want them to put sleeping bags in the shopping cart, not McDar.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 6:29 am

Actually, I just changed it to McDar Outdoor Gear - Sleeping Bags. I had it reversed, as you suggested, to begin with.

But, I will change it back right now. I want to give the page every advantage.

Done!

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 6:39 am

Bob,

I think this is a very good thread. It is showing a process from start to finish.

Many folks use different tools in an attempt to gage what needs to be done to a site to improve search engine placement.

I think some see results and do not know how to interpret them.

In this thread we have examined the results of a new tool and discussed what they could possibly mean. It was during this discussion that I had an idea how to test to see if an hypothesis was true.

Now we are in the experiment phase.

What ever the results of the experiment are, valuable information will be imparted.

Knowing what not to do can be as valuable as knowing what to do.

Kinda kewl, I think.

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 7:00 am

Certainly an interesting thread - I was going to offer a PR5 linkback and a bundle of 4s but thought it might complicate things.

The title comment is totally valid - I come from an on page seo position with only self controlled links, and, if they come from outside so be it and have always been able to achieve top positions.

However there is one caveat to this and that is that when you have two equally SEO'd pages then the one with the best link position will win.

BUT when I used the new McDar tool the other day I was gobsmacked by how few bl's were there for other sites - it wasn't in the thousands, it wasn't in the hundreds, it wasn't, in fact, more than a score for a very few, and mostly was in the lower single digits!!!

Equally sites with thousands of pages were not at the number one.

So is it down to quality and that anchor text?

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 7:24 am

Foxy,

I was going to add an interesting observation I have just made. I have an internal page that is optimized for "Nebo Sleeping Bags". It has a PR6 and 119 Google Backlinks. All but one of those backlinks is from internal pages from within the site. ALL of the backlinks have anchor text for either Nebo Sleeping Bags or just plain Sleeping Bags.

So, all 119 backlinks have anchor text with sleeping bags in it.

How does this page rank?

For the search term
Sleeping Bags - position 356, 119 Backlinks, 34 for allinanchor.
Nebo Sleeping Bags - position 1, 119 Backlinks, 1 for allinanchor.

You would think that with 119 backlinks, with the keyword in the anchor, the page would at least place higher in the allinanchor search. The internal links just don't have the strength that external links carry.

It will be interesting to see if the new page, with half the backlinks, (but all being external) passes this page up.

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 7:34 am

Foxy,

I will take you up on your offer of backlinks!

But, lets wait and use them after the initial placement of the page. It will be an excellent way to gage just how much effect the added links will make in both the regular search results and allinanchor placement.

This is getting real exciting!

I will certainly I will reciprocate in any way I can.

Thank you!

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 7:47 am

Thats why I held back with the links - keep it simple

By the way what is the title of the page above?
What is the first heading and then the text?

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 7:49 am

The PR5 is the ski site by the way would probably work well in "theme" with the sleeping bags

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 7:52 am

Page Title - Nebo Sleeping Bags

First heading - Sleeping Bags (actually I just changed the heading late yesterday to Nebo Sleeping Bags - but G dosn't know it yet).

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 8:19 am

I thought as much

Thats why you score with the "Nebo Sleeping Bags", as it is in the title, and not with the "sleeping bags" which is not.

Perhaps you need another page just for the "sleeping bags"?

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 8:26 am

Perhaps you need another page just for the "sleeping bags"?

That's what he just set up and what I'm linking to. A page called nothing but Sleeping Bags. Here is the link Sleeping Bags (http://www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm)

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 8:47 am

Actually, Foxy, if you do a search on Google for sleeping bags, you will find that there are several top sites that do not have Sleeping Bags in the title. In fact the number one page in the results is titled "Camping Accessories, Gear, And Supplies :"

AND a title of Nebo Sleeping Bags does have Sleeping Bags in the title.

I think that, since Florida, keyword proximity has pretty much flown out the window. It is probably the advantage when sites are very close in other factors.

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 8:55 am

Let's now take this thread in yet another direction. Let's talk about keyword phrases and anchor text as Google see them and uses them.

When I first got into this business some time in the last century :D -- I've always wanted to say that -- it was the general wisdom that there was no such thing as keyword phrases, but only single words. Google seems certainly to have disproved this, or at least changed this. The question is how is Google seeing and parsing keyword phrases?

If you use the keyword phrase 'blue stainless steel widgets' what is Google going to index your page for? In addition to the entire phrase you probably would like to be indexed for:

1. blue widgets
2. stainless steel widgets
3 widgets

But what about

a. blue stainless steel
b. stainless steel
c. steel widgets

Obviously you are not trying to get indexed for a. b. & c. If Google does index you for all those variations it will infact have you indexed for some non-relevant searches. So I think what Google has done is decided to index for the entire phrase to some degree.

Now take the 'nebo sleeping bags' example. I very much doubt that Google would have parsed that phrase and ranked that page for sleeping bags. Because if they had they would also have had to rank the page for 'nebo sleeping'. So the problem with that page was that the title was 'nebo sleeping bags' and Google would not be prepared to conclude that 'sleeping bags' used in anchor text was necessarily relevant to that phrase.

Now everyone will quickly point out that Google will highlight every word on the page that appears in the search term regardless of whether it is stands alone or is used as part of a phrase. I agree they do. But the top pages in the SERP will invariable include the exact keyword term unencumbered by a bunch of modifiers. And the top pages in the SERP will normally have the exact keyword phrase as the first words in their title.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 9:13 am

Actually, Bob, the page is #1 for Nebo Sleeping and #2 for Nebo Bags.

AND #1 for Sleeping Nebo

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 9:22 am

Thank goodness those sleeping bags were not called "bottomless sleeping bags" :D

Sorry just had to

What you are saying is entirely valid and concurs with what I was saying and also in that other thread that I wrote about freshbot and the title on the first page "theming" the site

the search on google on "sleeping bags" returned as you said

BUT

the actual title for sleepingbagsandtents.com starts with sleeping bags when you click on the link to the page

so I will still stay with the title importance, so far ;)

but next century who knows! Ha good call Compar!

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 9:46 am

If you go to that site and right mouse click and go to view source, you will find that the actual title is "Camping Accessories, Gear, And Supplies :".

What you view at the top of the page is a graphic named sbat.jpg that does NOT have an alt tag.

Also, it seems to be a common belief around SEO forums that javascript code on your page is bad in that it causes your text (read-keywords) to appear much further down the page. It dosn't seem that it has effected this site too much.

ALSO NOTE: the page is NOT W3C compliant!

If this site was asking for help, there would be a lot of things to point to as to why it was not doing well. Ironic, huh.

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 9:52 am

Fascinated with whats going here I went further

Bollocks I said go and look at the code

What they have is a great bundle of js and then the first relevant text that near matches the title is the "description" under that "Camping Gear and Accessories" which G shows on its page. I have not been able to find that "Camping Gear and Accessories" phrase so what I would assume is that this page was originally submitted by hand and that that phrase was placed in the "other comments" box.

So when you go and use your tools you will find that it rates highly for allintext, No1, and all in anchor, even though it obstensively it does not show that - but its title does and so does its text.

:)

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 9:57 am

If you go to that site and right mouse click and go to view source, you will find that the actual title is "Camping Accessories, Gear, And Supplies :".

But it is not!

here is the title

<Title>Sleeping Bags and Tents for every camping season:</Title>

So what are you getting?

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 10:02 am

WOW! You must be getting completely different results(?)

OR they serve up a switcheroo to visitors.

Heres what I got...
<Title>Camping Accessories, Gear, And Supplies :</Title>
<meta name='copyright' content='WEBPRO International Inc.'>
<meta name='author' content='WEBPRO International Inc'>
<meta name='description' content='Online resource for camping, hunting, and survival supplies. We have everything you need to stay alive during your outdoor experience.'>
<meta name='keywords' content='camping gear, camping supplies,SleepingBagsAndTents, sleepingbagsandtents, sleepingbagsandtents.com, sleeping bags, tents, outdoor, camping appliances, camping equipment, camping gear, mess kits, camp tents, flashlights, cots, outdoor equipment'>
<meta name='distribution' content='Global'>
<meta name='rating' content='General'>

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 10:07 am

Getting more interesting!!!!!

Go to the bottom - the very last right hand corner after the credit to the web site builder and.......

d></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr><tr><td>
<div align="right"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Website
Development<a href="http://www.webpro.com"><img src="../../../../Images/clear.gif" width="2" height="4" border="0"></a>By:
<a href="http://www.webpro.com" target="_blank">WEBPRO.COM</a>   </font></div>
</td></tr><tr><td></td></tr></table><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" height="5"><tr valign="top"><td height="5" background="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lback.gif" width="50%"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></td><td height="5" width="50%" background="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lback.gif"><a href="http://www.optsend.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.1starmy.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.nchydro.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.harperimage.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.harperscientific.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.sleepingbagsandtents.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.pictorico.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.techinfoinc.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.webpro.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a></td></tr></table>

loads of little spacers connected !!!

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 10:17 am

YES! now I see that.

if you go about two thirds down the page you find this...

<Title>Outfitters Of Quality Camping Gear, Outdoor Supplies, And Survival Equipment.</Title>
<meta name='copyright' content='WEBPRO International Inc.'>
<meta name='author' content='WEBPRO International Inc'>
<meta name='description' content='Sleeping Bags and Tents has the cold weather sleeping bags and tents you need to keep you safe and warm. And camping gear for all your outdoor adventures.'>
<meta name='keywords' content='camping gear, camping supplies,SleepingBagsAndTents, sleepingbagsandtents, sleepingbagsandtents.com, sleeping bags, tents, outdoor, camping appliances, camping equipment, camping gear, mess kits, camp tents, flashlights, cots, outdoor equipment'>
<meta name='distribution' content='Global'>
<meta name='rating' content='General'>
<meta name='robots' content='all'>

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 10:22 am

many of those "hidden" links are cross linked with each other.

I know that SBandT have backlinks from virtually every page of nchydro.com. I noticed that while researching for sites to request link exchanges with.

My guess now is that this tactic is used to cross link every page on every one of those sites.

So, that is their secret!

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 11:18 am

src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.techinfoinc.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.webpro.com"><img src="../../../../Secure/Adminpages/Images/Lspacer.gif" border="0">

The interesting thing about this is they don't use alt tags on these images links. They could get a much bigger boost with alt tags. For image links, alt tag is anchor text.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 11:36 am

Indeed Bob, but alt tags would make the hidden links visible on mouseover.

I know from researching for links, SBandT had 4365 backlinks reported by alltheweb before alltheweb changed recently. MOST of those links coming from 3 or 4 sites.

Foxy

Apr 8th 2004, 1:19 pm

Sorry guys but Ive got to go but I'll be back in the morning :)

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 1:33 pm

Have a good night, Foxy and thanks for all of your help!

compar

Apr 8th 2004, 2:12 pm

Indeed Bob, but alt tags would make the hidden links visible on mouseover.

Yes but if you put them way down on the bottom of the page who cares and 99.99% of your visitors will never mouseover this part of the page.

But image links without alt tags can only be useful for boosting PR. So they are doing all this questionable stuff for very little gain. It's the old story, if you are going to rob a bank make sure there is a $ 1,000,000 there. You don't want to get caught for only stealing $1,000.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 2:56 pm

Point well taken! It's scary that they got to number one by using only the "small" artillary.

You know I have looked at that page several times and have never noticed those links before.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 3:04 pm

I have a copy of their source code from back on December 3. They have always been number one but, like many of us, were launched off of the planet by Florida. It occurred to me to find them and (sneaky, I know) copy their code so, if they find their way back, I could see what they did.

Their code is the same today as it was on Dec 3. If they made modifications that caused their return, it was NOT on-page modifications.

mcdar

Apr 8th 2004, 7:55 pm

UPDATE: The new page is listed in Google!

At this point, it will only come up if searching for
Ledge Sleeping Bags #2
McDar Sleeping Bags #2
Deep Creek Sleeping Bags #2

Sleeping Bags #n/a
allinanchor:sleeping bags #n/a

Foxy

Apr 9th 2004, 1:47 am

So the new page has a title "Sleeping bags-...."

So where is Google getting McDar Sleeping Bags? as per:

McDar Sleeping Bags

Nebo Sleeping Bags. Sleeping Bag Care. Sleeping Bag Construction. Sleeping Bags. Mummy Sleeping Bags. Ledge Deep Creek +25 ...

?????

I have a feeling that if you can answer this we will have some of the answers to that other page on that other site. :cool:

mcdar

Apr 9th 2004, 4:32 am

The page was named "McDar Sleeping Bags" but at Bobs suggestion I changed it yesterday. G crawled the page prior to the change.

"Nebo Sleeping Bags. Sleeping Bag Care. Sleeping Bag Construction. Sleeping Bags. Mummy Sleeping Bags. Ledge Deep Creek +25 ... " is just the first text that WAS on that page when G crawled it. No mystery.

currently
Title: Sleeping Bags - McDar Outdoor Gear
1st heading - Sleeping Bags
1st text - Mummy Sleeping Bags, Oversized Sleeping Bags, Queen Size Sleeping Bags, Women and Youth Bags (these are all hyperlinks to sections of the page)

mcdar

Apr 9th 2004, 7:43 am

I think I have found a perfect example of how to use the Keyword Analysis Tool to fine tune a page.

Foxy, you'll love this one!

Do you think it should be discussed in this thread or somewhere else?

compar

Apr 9th 2004, 7:57 am

Why not discuss it here? It is still on the topic. The only exception would be if you wanted to discuss it more privately then you could start a new thread in the 'underground' section of the forum.

mcdar

Apr 9th 2004, 8:21 am

Bob,

I don't think it needs to be private. I did discover a few bugs in the Keyword Tool I want to fix as well.

One "bug" is that when you put our domain name in the search, it does not limit the results to just your main page. The results will actually represent the first page found from your site in the results. I want to fix the tool so it accurately displays the page returned for your site.

...give me a little time to fix this and I will present the example here.

Foxy

Apr 9th 2004, 9:05 am

The page was named "McDar Sleeping Bags" but at Bobs suggestion I changed it yesterday. G crawled the page prior to the change.

Now that is real interesting because on my timber site I placed the index page thinking that G would come around in a little while but to my surprise I ended up at no 2 for a phrase that now I wish I didnt have in my title and I'm having a job to get google to accept anything else as a "theme" for the site as at this moment but it is early days.

This is where I get the opinion that Freshbot sets the "theme" for the site and then all else follows - so if you want to get up and running quickly you must get the first page absolutely dead on with a group of other pages in the first instance of putting it down.

I think I have found a perfect example of how to use the Keyword Analysis Tool to fine tune a page.

Foxy, you'll love this one!

Do you think it should be discussed in this thread or somewhere else?

I look forward to it and, as Compar says, let's have it here. :)

mcdar

Apr 9th 2004, 1:24 pm

OK - still some bugs but good enough for now!

This is a simple experiment with manipulating the page title.

Go to the Keyword Analysis Tool (link below) and enter in

Site: www.mcdar.com
Keyword: sleeping bags tents

The results show a page returned form the site we entered at
position #17, 1 Backlink, and #12 for allinanchor.

These numbers all fall within the numbers in the results for the other top ten sites. Not great numbers but maybe close enough!

If you look at the page titles for the top ten sites (Note: I made the keyword a hyperlink so you could go right to the search). You'll notice in this case MOST of the titles have the keywords in them.

I really have not optimized any page for this search but I have just changed the title of the page returned in #17 position to see what effect it will have on it's placement for this search.

Title was - McDar Camping Equipment
New Title - Sleeping Bags Tents - McDar Camping Equipment

I will watch to see what effect this change will make.

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 9th 2004, 5:26 pm

Update:

I just did a search for Sleeping Bags and could not believe my eyes! (I know it won't last, BUT).

Sleeping Bags - McDar Outdoor Gear :D

position#104 allinanchor#32

I think that is great for a page that is barely 48hrs. old and certainly all of the links to it have not been discovered yet.

I know it will be changing.

Caryl

Foxy

Apr 10th 2004, 12:03 am

I got similar for your search but I also got in the pages column

24 for site:http: . ( 0.12 seconds) ttp://www.mimi.privat.t-online.de/shop/index.html Similar pages http:/www2.mozcom.com/~zaec/ Similar pages http:/web.tiscali.it/longonimarcoulm/ Similar pages [ More results

and links in the large numbers, 5.000.000 or so!!!

What will make this interesting though is if the overall position gets to come down when that Title was placed originally as Mcdar etc...

If you search on G for sleeping bags you are now 100 with the new title

If it stalls it might be because of McDar still in the title ...any other comments here?

and the solution would be to take out your name...bless you. :)

mcdar

Apr 10th 2004, 4:08 am

I got similar for your search but I also got in the pages column

24 for site:http: . ( 0.12 seconds) ttp://www.mimi.privat.t-online.de/shop/index.html Similar pages http:/www2.mozcom.com/~zaec/ Similar pages http:/web.tiscali.it/longonimarcoulm/ Similar pages [ More results

and links in the large numbers, 5.000.000 or so!!!

Foxy,

Could you PM me with details of the problem you experienced in the results.
ie exact url used and search term? Does it give the same results when you repeat the search?

I was working the tool yesterday, maybe I messed something up.

Thanks,
Caryl

mcdar

Apr 10th 2004, 11:35 am

IMPORTANT TO NOTE:

As we are constructing this experiment from the beginning, most elements are very controled.

ALL anchortext to the page sleeping-bags.htm say ONLY sleeping bags - NO EXTRA terms ie. new sleeping bags or mcdar sleeping bags

I just checked out our page and find that we are
#32 for allinanchor search for sleeping bags. (plural)
#n/a for "" "" "" sleeping bag (singular)

Google is NOT stemming Anchor Text!

I have found so far... If your target keywords are ex. Sleeping Bags
Anchortext:
Sleeping Bags (only) - most weight
Sleeping Bags BlaBla - less weight
BlaBla Sleeping Bags - even less weight
Sleeping Bag (singular) - NO weight - as far as anchortext is concerned.

Caryl

compar

Apr 10th 2004, 11:56 am

ALL anchortext to the page sleeping-bags.htm say ONLY sleeping bags - NO EXTRA terms ie. new sleeping bags or mcdar sleeping bags

I just checked out our page and find that we are
#32 for allinanchor search for sleeping bags. (plural)
#n/a for "" "" "" sleeping bag (singular)

Google is NOT stemming Anchor Text!

I have found so far... If your target keywords are ex. Sleeping Bags
Anchortext:
Sleeping Bags (only) - most weight
Sleeping Bags BlaBla - less weight
BlaBla Sleeping Bags - even less weight
Sleeping Bag (singular) - NO weight - as far as anchortext is concerned.

Caryl

I think all your conclusions above are correct with the exception of stemming. I think Google stems. Maybe it just takes them a little longer. My pharmacy site is highly optimized for 'online pharmacy'. It is the only thing I use in the anchor text. But Google ranks the site higher in the SERPs for the plural version "online pharmacies". I do think the plural version appears in the content, but that is the only place.

Do you have the singular phrase in the content on the page anywhere? Possibly, and this is pure speculation, Google needs to be able to fine the stemmed version somewhere on the site before they will rank for it. If they had this rule in their algo it would prevent stupid stemming mistakes. Just a thought.

mcdar

Apr 10th 2004, 12:52 pm

Bob,

I think you misunderstood my post. The numbers I was comparing were allinanchor

In the regular search results, the page ranks 103 for sleeping bags and 108 for sleeping bag.

Keword density is reported as follows...

sleeping bags 15.35 % 61.67

sleeping bag 10.09 % 59.51

So, it could be argued that the discrepency in SERP placement is due to keyword density. It very well may be.

I ran side by side searches using the Google Datacenter Watch tool and here is a comparison of the two sites.

1st: Sleeping Bag
#1 position . Camping Accessories, Gear, And Supplies : allinanchor: #22
#14 position . Barbie Glamour and Glitter Sleeping Bag allinanchor: #1

2nd: Sleeping Bags
#1 position . Camping Accessories, Gear, And Supplies : allinanchor: #1
#n/a position . Barbie Glamour and Glitter Sleeping Bag allinanchor: #n/a

Please note that "Barbie Glamor" is from a real big site 8150 pages, 8010 links.

I guess, at this point, I would target plural and hope it encompasses, in some way, the singular. But I don't think it works the other way around.

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 10th 2004, 1:06 pm

Bob,

I have just checked the "Barbie" page for keyword density and found that you are indeed right again. In that the "Barbie" page has a keyword density of 3.64% for sleeping bags AND there is NO OCCURRENCE of "Bags" (plural) on the page.

FYI - from Shawn's Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/)
sleeping bags 633.0 searches/day
sleeping bag 222.0 searches/day

Boy, would I like to play with that "Barbie" page, one "s" at a time. Just to see how many "S"s it would take to make it come up for sleeping bags.

Caryl

compar

Apr 10th 2004, 7:12 pm

Let's take this thread in yet another direction. McDar, you are one of the last webmaster who still seems to be using frames. I always thought the general wisdom was that the SEs didn't like frames.

I just looked at what Google has cached for the page we are working on and all they have cached is the frame with the sleeping bags. I wouldn't suggest we change anything now because we don't want to introduce more variables in our experiment, but I would like to have a discussion about the use of frames.

mcdar

Apr 10th 2004, 7:16 pm

Well, shoot...

Foxy

Apr 10th 2004, 11:09 pm

I have and do use them every where with some amazing results in both framset and iframe forms.

What is good is the noframes as it enables you to achieve hi density and links in an unorthodox way without upsetting the punter

It allows for the relevant page to be linked to "found" and then using js redirect bring up the "bigger picture" - similarly for iframes

mcdar

Apr 11th 2004, 4:16 am

A major problem I heard discussed with frames is a link to an inner page would bring the page up without the frameset.

I have no problem with this as a javascript is called on the load of a page to check for the frames. If not found, the frames are loaded and the referring page is loaded in it's appropriate frame.

I like using frames in that I can link to a page on another site to offer a visitor more information, but I can choose to load that external page in the main window of our site and not send the visitor off to a new site, possibly losing them.

I designed a site for a fishing guide that books Fly Fishing "Sports". Most of his customers are from out of state, some from out of the country. On his site, they can not only reserve their dates for fishing, but they can view all of the bed and breakfasts in the area, book a flight, and rent a car. (All without leaving his website!)

mcdar

Apr 11th 2004, 5:43 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004

also important to note:
on 04/08/2004 the page came up for these searches.
Ledge Sleeping Bags #2
McDar Sleeping Bags #2
Deep Creek Sleeping Bags #2

Today it does not come up for any of them!

I've decided that it would be easier to observe progress, or lack there of, if I just continue to add to the history. :p

mcdar

Apr 11th 2004, 6:12 am

Another interesting observation for today!

The "snippets" Google is using in many of the results are the META DESCRIPTIONS!

Foxy

Apr 11th 2004, 6:16 am

They are known to use that but not the meta keywords

I've had a suspicion recently that they have been using it a bit more....!

mcdar

Apr 11th 2004, 7:44 am

Many people have been "lulled" into thinking that since Google does not pay attention to them anymore, they have since been omitting them.

I have seen threads on different forms addressing this issue. There was always the voice of reason chimming in to warn these folks that "just because Google does not use these anymore, most of the other search engines do, so keep using them". That advice may have fallen on deft ears though.

Some people may be paying a price if thier keywords are NOT there.

compar

Apr 11th 2004, 9:33 am

Another interesting observation for today!

The "snippets" Google is using in many of the results are the META DESCRIPTIONS!

I think that is because of the frames. But it is also the reason that you always want to include a meta description and write it so that you would be happy to have it used to actually describe your site.

BTW I think this thread just set the record for the first thread to exceed 100 posts. Not bad considering that there are only three of us active on it.

I don't know if Shawn should give us a gold star or expell us :D

Foxy

Apr 11th 2004, 10:41 am

AND you are the first to exceed 200!!!

and still a Beserker!!

Mind you it does take a bit to go further than beserk

Hehe ;)

Oh by the way I puzzled and puzzled when you said I think debertch was german for dirty old man and then the penny dropped we use debauched for that description....oh well I do get there in the end..sad or what!!

compar

Apr 11th 2004, 1:08 pm

Oh by the way I puzzled and puzzled when you said I think debertch was german for dirty old man and then the penny dropped we use debauched for that description....oh well I do get there in the end..sad or what!!

Well there is a different a "dirty old man" can still have some redeeming social values. But if someone is debauched they are normal best to be avoided.

A "dirty old man" is sexual flirtatious, but not usually considered dangerous. And you can be a "dirty old man" at 30 if you are flirting with a 20 year old.

Here is the officail definition from an American dictionary:
A middle-aged or elderly man with lewd or lecherous inclinations.

Foxy

Apr 12th 2004, 12:23 am

Is that Here is the officail definition from an American dictionary: the definition for "dirty old man then"?

Ha :D

mcdar

Apr 12th 2004, 5:40 am

Quote:
Originally Posted by mcdar
Another interesting observation for today!

The "snippets" Google is using in many of the results are the META DESCRIPTIONS!

I think that is because of the frames. But it is also the reason that you always want to include a meta description and write it so that you would be happy to have it used to actually describe your site.

No, the "snippets" using the meta description is NOT due to using frames. A quick look at the search results shows that the meta description is being used even for the site in the number one position. They are not using frames.

I pay very close attention to what text Google is using for the "snippet"! If I see one of our pages come up and the "snippet" does not make sense or seem appealing. I make modifications on that page so it does. Afterall, it is the ONLY thing the searcher sees and often makes the difference of whether they will click on your link or just pass you by!

I cannot remember the last time I saw the mets description used.

compar

Apr 12th 2004, 8:42 am

I have found that Google will display a different "snippet" depending on the search term. If you have a lot of content they will grab and use the portion of the content that includes the search term.

So I wonder if they are also using the meta description when it is the most appropriate text matching the keyword or search term used.

Do a search for the site involved using some quite different search term if possible and see if they still use the same snippet.

mcdar

Apr 12th 2004, 9:50 am

mcdar

Apr 12th 2004, 10:02 am

Bob,

Looking at the same site searching for tents, number 15 in the results, their meta description is still being used.

Yes, what you are talking about is how it has most commonly occurred, but that is not what has been happening since yesterday.

mcdar

Apr 13th 2004, 5:16 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004

also important to note:
on 04/08/2004 the page came up for these searches.
Ledge Sleeping Bags #2
McDar Sleeping Bags #2
Deep Creek Sleeping Bags #2

Today:
Ledge Sleeping Bags #n/a
McDar Sleeping Bags #2
Deep Creek Sleeping Bags #2
_____________________________________________________

I did a search on Google for site:www.compar.com +sleeping bags to try and determine if any of Bob's links have been discovered by Google. The results show only one page found. [edited to add: Bob did the search later and found 19 pages listed]

I think it will take a deep crawl before the New Page realizes the benifit of the majority of his links.

Actually, this will be a great search to add to my "daily ritual". If we can see movement of the New Page PLUS an increase in the number of Bob's links Google has discovered, it might give us more insight into the value of each additional link.

compar

Apr 13th 2004, 7:24 am

I did a search on Google for site:www.compar.com +sleeping bags to try and determine if any of Bob's links have been discovered by Google. The results show only one page found.

I just did this search and while Google only displays one page it reports 19 pages and give you the "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." option. When you accept that option it shows 18 of the individual articles. So it has indexed just less than half of them so far.

mcdar

Apr 13th 2004, 7:59 am

WOW Bob,

Either I was totally BLIND or it has changed since this morning! - I can't believe I missed that........... :eek:

mcdar

Apr 14th 2004, 6:10 am

mcdar

Apr 14th 2004, 9:40 am

Definately some kind of re-shuffling going on at google...

see the results for the new page on different datacenters

bpal

Apr 14th 2004, 9:00 pm

Hello everyone. I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this. Thank you mcdar for the info about this forum.

I'm still pretty new to seo (around 5 months), but I think this is a wonderful experiment that you have here. I have a couple of questions though. First, I'm not showing any backlinks for the site you are testing, where are you seeing these backlinks (the ones that compar placed)? Second, on your statistics that you are showing for positions versus anchor text, why has it all of a sudden gone to n/a?

Thanks

mcdar

Apr 14th 2004, 9:30 pm

Hello bpal,

Welcome to the forum! :)

I do not know if Google has "credited" the new page with the baclinks yet but, if I search for site:www.compar.com +sleeping bags Google is showing the pages on his site with "sleeping bags" on it. (it shows which pages Google has crawled so far).

The fluctuations in both serp position and allinanchor position is a natural occurence when a page is new. This happens because Google's database is a combination of older cached versions of pages and new data found by the "freshbots". You may be familiar with seeing dates next to some listings.

Once a new page has been indexed (not dependent on freshbot ) it will "stick" in the results, even if it was not visited recently by the freshbot.

As this happens with new pages, it also happens with Google counting new links it has found to your site. The backlinks initially are counted as the freshbot reports them. Eventually, the info is INDEXED and therefore is in Googles memory or cache whether or not freshbot visits frequently.

It may be helpful to think of it in terms of our own short term and long term memory. To get information in our "long term memory" takes repetition (for most of us) that is why we study while in school (some of us).

Sorry if this does not make any sense as it is late and I am tired. :o

Caryl

Foxy

Apr 14th 2004, 11:14 pm

Hello everyone. I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this. Thank you mcdar for the info about this forum.

Not at all

Welcome to this thread and the forum

There are some very good threads other than this one running here and the commentary by Compar [for his posts go to his profile] and others top draw stuff as are the tools that members have offered here

In fact the best tools to assist are here written by Shawn [God] and McDar [Almost God] so this forum has a much more technical base than others which seem to revolve around "gee I'm 20 today"!!!

bpal

Apr 14th 2004, 11:35 pm

Thanks for the warm welcome and the answers to my questions. I'm just hoping that this test has some good results. I've been trying to gather links a lot lately, and it's tedious, but rewarding. The results of all of this will help motivate me to keep gathering links with good anchor text I'm hoping. I just hope that my hard work will be enough to push me over the top and get some good serp results.

bpal

Apr 15th 2004, 12:03 am

Something I was wondering about the tool. I just checked a site that had around 10 backwards links. Now it's showing in position number 2 for allinanchor, but when you look at the anchor text of the thinks, most of them don't have the search terms in them, or only have a partial term. Have you done any further testing on this, or is this just my newbness missing something?

Foxy

Apr 15th 2004, 12:29 am

I've been trying to gather links a lot lately, and it's tedious, but rewarding.

I'm not an advocate of "banging on with finding links" as I don't think that the effort gives the rewards but I am an advocate of quality back linking on ones own site/sites and other links that "arrive" for you

For example if you go to McDars tool and pop in Ski France (http://www.ski-france-ok.com/) and the url www.ski-france-ok.com you will see that we are no 8 - now go into google and do the link: thing for this site and look at the links - they are all [less one] achieved using internal [to us] methods and [using McDars other tool http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php] we rank 4 on allinanchor and allintext and 1 and 2 for allinurl

The reason we don't rank higher overall is because I won't go out and get more links outside and we don't have the "authority" [read size] that others do - I think! :)

mcdar

Apr 15th 2004, 5:43 am

I just checked a site that had around 10 backwards links. Now it's showing in position number 2 for allinanchor, but when you look at the anchor text of the thinks, most of them don't have the search terms in them, or only have a partial term. Have you done any further testing on this, or is this just my newbness missing something?

bpal,

I think that how Google comes up with a ranking on allinanchor: is as much of a mystery as their ranking in the regular serps. I will say though, the number of backlinks reported are NOT all of the backlinks being evaluated. Remember, Google only reports backlinks that are from pages of PR4 or greater. For the site you mention, there could be only 10 PR>4 links but hundreds of PR<4 links.

One of our competitors has 119 Backlinks reported by Google. However, another search revealed that they literally had over 4000 links coming from internal pages from a few other sites.

Also, the "new page" experiment shows zero backlinks, according to Google. However, we know that there are at least 50 solid links to that page. Those links won't be visible in Google searches until Google updates PR/Backlinks again.

It still will be interesting to see whether the page will recognize the full benefit of those links, PRIOR to the update. Or, will the update bring added value.

mcdar

Apr 15th 2004, 5:48 am

bpal

Apr 15th 2004, 5:57 am

Wow, almost in the top 100 that fast for a search with over two and a half million results. Imagine what that would do to a search with a lot less results. Bob, if you aren't already, you need to start makin' some money online with that kinda PR power. ;)

mcdar

Apr 15th 2004, 6:45 am

bpal

Just as an example of how, relatively easy, it is to come up for less competitve terms, do a search on Google for Ledge sleeping bags.

You will find that this forum actually comes up at around position #3 or #4. This is just due to the product being mentioned here several times then add the size and overall backlinks to digitalpoint.com.

compar

Apr 15th 2004, 8:04 am

Foxy

Apr 15th 2004, 9:44 am

Compar, McDar just tell me when you want to thro in my PR5 [and 4s if you want] on this fascinating exercise

mcdar

Apr 15th 2004, 10:29 am

Foxy,

I was just thinking about that! :rolleyes:

Since I have found a way to identify which of Bob's pages have been spidered, I think I should be able to do the same for yours. I assume none of the sites you are speaking about are about sleeping bags...

So, I say go ahead and add the links. I will record the day they are added and add a search for those into my daily lookup.

Thanks! ;)

Foxy

Apr 15th 2004, 10:36 am

OK - If we are all in agreement [Compar speak up] I will do it next Monday or later if you think that is a better idea.

Ideally it would be nice to see a statistical plateau before we enter a new factor

So What does ya think? :)

compar

Apr 15th 2004, 10:53 am

Sorry to be late to the party, but that's fine with me. Add your links.

compar

Apr 15th 2004, 11:03 am

I just reread your message and saw the item about satistical plateau, but I don't think it matters. Let just drive this page to the top. We may never know exactly how many links it takes but we will know we did it with X links.

mcdar

Apr 15th 2004, 11:07 am

Bob, I agree.

But, you know, I am not really certain exactly when links get credited. Is is when they are found? Are they applied in batches, maybe sometime prior to PR/Backlink update? Are they applied after the PR/Backlink update?

I am hoping that recording this information daily will give us some insight into these questions.

Foxy

Apr 15th 2004, 2:10 pm

Monday then!

bpal

Apr 15th 2004, 3:48 pm

How many do you want?

LOL, that's a very vague reply. How many what, links? Are you selling or giving? :D

I'm still fairly new to seo and websites... around 5 months, but I do have a site that gets about 355,000 results for the keywords and if you wanted to have a second test going at the same time it might show things on a smaller scale compared to the one with over 2 and a half million results... you would have no complaints out of me... well, it would probably be crummy if the links are only temporary, but at the same time it would give time to build up more links after we see the results so I'd be happy.

Then again, if "How many do you want" didn't pertain to what all I just typed, please forgive me for being so forward. Like I said, I'm still new, and all of this is amazing to me as I try to find my place here on the net. It just seems like there is so much opportunity if one can just get the traffic to their sites.

I'm having trouble lately getting links. Maybe I'm emailing the wrong people or something. It seems like only about 1 out of 6 or 7 are replying, and now I have to go through and erase a lot of outgoing links and wonder if they just didn't reply or didn't read their mail yet. There are so many ways to capitalize off of the internet, yet getting that traffic seems to be the hardest part. :(

compar

Apr 15th 2004, 7:18 pm

You said that I should make some money from my links. So I asked how many do many do you want?

It's like walking into the bake shop and saying to the proprietor "nice looking donuts". His response will invariable be "how many do you want".

It was not an offer of free links. I'm happy with the test we are doing.

bpal

Apr 15th 2004, 7:28 pm

Fair enough, I apologize for my error. I guess I didn't make myself clear though about how to make money with the links. I meant to enter other markets and use the PR advantage that you have to obtain higher rankings, not selling the links. You may very well be doing this already. ;)

bpal

Apr 15th 2004, 8:53 pm

The results from the keyword analysis tool and from a search on google aren't matching up on my end. Different datacenters?

mcdar

Apr 15th 2004, 9:10 pm

bpal,

Yep. If you do a search on Google (www.google.com) the search request resolves to one of at least 8 datacenters. Right now the serps are not stable from one datacenter to the next. I have even seen changes in a single datacenter from one search to the next.

hulkster

Apr 15th 2004, 11:27 pm

I've just made a posting in the Seach Engine Optimization forum (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=363) offering a free PR7 link from my home page to MCDAR (only) to assist in this research.

If of interest to you, go ahead and respond publically with your requested URL, anchor, and title text (so others can benefit from your research) and I'll make it so.

This page is crawled a couple of times/week by GoogleBot (I can provide you exact times when it happens if interested), so I would expect the results to pop up pretty quick. People have commented on "themes" - your guess is as good as mine how Google classifies it! ;-)

alek

mcdar

Apr 16th 2004, 4:51 am

mcdar

Apr 16th 2004, 5:16 am

mcdar

Apr 16th 2004, 5:39 am

In case anyone is interested, here are the dates of Google's last several PR/Backlink Updates.

April 07
18 Days
March 20
38 days (this is correct - Google missed one)
February 11
16 days
January 26
15 days
January 11
18 days
December 24
18 days
December 6
16 days
November 20

hulkster

Apr 16th 2004, 6:07 am

Alek,

Thank you! I will take you up on the offer.

Every link so far (that I know of) simply says sleeping bags, nothing else.
So please just enter this <a href="http://www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm">sleeping bags</a>

Let us know when it goes up and I'll start searching for it in G to record when G finds it.

EXCELLENT!!!

Line was added to www.komar.org (http://www.komar.org/) at 0645 MDT on April 16th, 2004 under the semi-recent/new additions. In fact, you should have seen your first referral from it shortly thereafter from an IP address ending in .121.

Per my "offer", that link will stay in place for at least a month (depending if I remember to check on it after May 16th ;-) ... if the next PR/backlink update runs late, I'll leave it in place until then so we can see it there.

I might add that there were only 4 external links from that site, one of which is to Google itself, and the other 3 go to web sites hosted on the same IP address (one of those is the powder2glass Google Compute Toolbar page). So there isn't much PR dilution.

Finally, attached below are the googlebot entries for the top-level page the last week - I haven't really looked closely at this before - the fact it arrives at similar times every day is kinda interesting and might be yet another science experiment to do someday! ;-)

Thanx for your support of a good cause and as you mentioned in the other thread, what a coincidence that you did Alzheimer's research in an earlier life.

alek

P.S. You didn't mention a "title tag" - it's unclear if those really "count" for anything, but let me know if you wanted one added as part of your testing.

64.68.82.168 - - [11/Apr/2004:22:42:58 -0600] "GET HTTP/1.0" 200 6148 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

64.68.82.47 - - [12/Apr/2004:22:52:56 -0600] "GET HTTP/1.0" 200 6310 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

64.68.82.46 - - [13/Apr/2004:23:31:25 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6310 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html"

64.68.82.201 - - [13/Apr/2004:23:40:36 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6310 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

64.68.82.201 - - [14/Apr/2004:22:34:38 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6376 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

64.68.82.168 - - [15/Apr/2004:22:16:04 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6376 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

sadcox66

Apr 16th 2004, 6:11 am

mcdar

Apr 16th 2004, 6:18 am

sadcox66,

Welcome aboard! It is easy to see how many links from my signature each day by looking at the upper right hand corner of my posts.

As I do add more posts durring the course of a day, it will probably be safer to just monitor those that way.

It is important to add, even though the PR for this forum is a PR6, the actual PR of the pages in this thread are a PR0.

At this point, the links may count towards total links, but will not add any PR value.

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 16th 2004, 6:36 am

Alek,

Thanks for the link! I will add the search to tomorrows UPDATE:

The link is fine as it is, with no Title at this time. I think it would be interesting to add to this experiment, later down the road though.

Say, if we get to a certain position that seems to be stable, then tweeking by simply adding titles to the links. :)

mcdar

Apr 16th 2004, 7:46 am

I have long suspected that directory categories are also used as weighing in Googles results.

I have taken the liberty of adding a column to today's keyword tool results. (see attachment)

I have highlighted the sites in the top ten that I think we can most closely approximate their "numbers" (total site pages, Backlinks, etc.)

The main difference will be that the "New Page" is on a site listed in Googles Directory: Shopping > Recreation > Outdoors which is much lower on "the feed chain" than are the manufacturers. Recreation > Outdoors > Equipment > Manufacturing

I have noted that the Retail Sites in the top ten have significantly higher numbers one or more of the columns in the results.

mcdar

Apr 17th 2004, 4:32 am

mcdar

Apr 17th 2004, 4:38 am

McDar, Excellent tools excellent thread. Just want to chime in to say we need to count up the number of links leading out from digitalpoint (PR6) , your profile signature leading out to mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm and add them to compar's count.

sadcox66,

You were right to suggest I add the count of my posts each day to the total as, what is reported in the top corner always updates!

Thank you!!!

compar

Apr 17th 2004, 7:17 am

Things seem to be progressing very nicely and about as you would expect. We have to be prepared for a reversal if it happens. Google isn't always exactly consistent. But so far so good.

What is interesting, or seem to be proven, is that you can advance without a PR or backlink update. I think a lot of people feel nothing will happen until the backlinks are reported, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

mcdar

Apr 17th 2004, 7:47 am

Bob,

I have seen where there seems to be a "cut off" an "x" number of days prior to a backlink/PR update. Where links not picked up prior to that time, are not included.

With keeping daily stats on the progress of this page, I am hoping to get a good idea of that "cut off" time frame.

Also, it will be interesting to see if, once the pages acquires a PR rating, if that value gives some kind of extra boost.

Regarding a reversal. It has been a very common event these days to see Google reverting to an "older" cached version of their database. If and when that occurs, we may very well be able to determine how dated the cached version is.

I also want to bring up a "phenomenon" that I have witnessed in Google behavior.

I have in the recent past made some big changes on a page (ie. removing text, link text, and title change) and Google crawled and cached the new version just fine.

HOWEVER, for almost another 2 weeks, Google would return the page in the results for a keyword search on the text that was NO LONGER ON THE PAGE and was never a part of anchor text leading to the page. If I clicked on the cached version that Google was showing in the results, it was indeed the new version and the keywords were not there.

I have also read threads from others seeing the same thing. It seems that maybe on keywords returning over a certain number of results (say for example 2 million) they had some stored information somewhere that was used to expedite returning the results.

This sort of thing could cause some lag in the progress.

hulkster

Apr 17th 2004, 10:37 am

Alek's Link:
Not found yet 4/17/2004

FYI FWIW: Googlebot showed up right on time last night and indexed my home page (http://www.komar.org/) - attached is the apache log entry. BTW, Googlebot slurped down 127 files yesterday - looking at the last couple days of log files, this is actually on the low side for a typical day.

I often see SERP results withen a few days for stuff like this on my internal pages - be interesting to see if similar behavior for external stuff.

BTW, just a thought, but if you wanted to change the anchor text to something like "sleeping bags komar" or maybe some stemmed variation of sleeping bags, just let me know. Ditto as we have discussed for any title tag - you are driving the show! ;-)

alek

64.68.82.58 - - [16/Apr/2004:22:25:40 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 6494 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

mcdar

Apr 17th 2004, 10:49 am

alek,

Thanks for the info. Let me think about adding to the anchor text. There may be some merit in doing that. Especially AFTER Google discovers the link.

Caryl

compar

Apr 17th 2004, 2:32 pm

Why would you want to change the anchor text? In my mind that ruins the experiment. I think we want to leave everything exactly as is until we can reach some conclusion.

Then you can screw around with some of the variables. I'll be really disappointed if you make any changes until then.

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 4:20 am

Sit tight, Bob!

We are not going to be changing anything. It would indeed complicate our experiment at this time.

I said the idea might have some merit because I have read threads in some forums that people WARN others to vary the anchor text or "you will be penalized".

The thing I have personally concluded is that extraneous words (any other than target keywords) weaken the strength of the link.

No changes should be made unless all concur (Bob, Foxy, Caryl)

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 4:38 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:***

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm
04/07/2004 "New Page" went live

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004
Postion#133 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/14/2004
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]

_____________________________________________________

number of Bob's links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
38 - 4/18/2004 (10 datacenters report 37, 16 report 32, the rest - 37)
__________________

Alek's Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________
# of Links from my posts to this thead
69 4/17/2004 [Edited to remove 20 posts in this thread that did not have link]
75 4/18/2004
__________________
Caryl's Links [links posted 04/07/2004]
2 PR6s & 5 PR5's (no way of telling which are accounted for)

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 4:47 am

Anybody that happens to be following this thread is welcome to join in and add comments or questions!

We are all learning here.

hulkster

Apr 18th 2004, 8:12 am

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]

__________________

Alek's Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________

Sounds like maybe the www.komar.org link kicked (that was some BIG movement! ;-) - I normally see this in a day or two in the SERP's, so interesting to me that consistant for external links too. You have two 4/17 data points - was that last one actually the 18th?

BTW, not only did I get my "normal" late night visit from Googlebot last night, but Googlebot/Test came by for the first time ever on my main page - see this other forum thread. (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2705)

I often seen upward movement after the first jump, so I would not be surprised to have this climb up a bit more. I know we have more than my link being added; so other factors are also at play.

alek

P.S. Bob: I'm just tossing out ideas - again, you guys are driving the show and I won't change stuff until you guys agree to do so - I agree that changing one thing at a time is ideal.

compar

Apr 18th 2004, 8:44 am

I said the idea might have some merit because I have read threads in some forums that people WARN others to vary the anchor text or "you will be penalized".

The thing I have personally concluded is that extraneous words (any other than target keywords) weaken the strength of the link.
You are correct, people do WARN about repeating exactly anchor text, but I don't really believe it. That is one of the tests within our test as far as I'm concerned and explains why I reacted to strongly to the suggestion.

I also agree with you about dilution. I've just had a fairly length dicussion about this on another forum I think. I'll see if I can find it and post it here. And this is just another reason not to mess with the anchor text.

Today's Results

Well we have certainly seen a dramatic leap in the SERPs today. Now the question? Were we on track for this, or is this the result of the one additional backlink?

Here are some of the problems in intepreting these results.

1. All of my links are from a single domain -- run of the site type links. While obviously they were promoting the site, the new link is from a separate domain on a different IP block. So did the fact that it is from a different site give it extra importance?

2. All of my links are PR5 or PR6. The new link is PR7. I personally don't think the PR value of a link contributes anything to the relevancy value of the link. But if we argee that today's jump is because of this one additional link was it the PR7 that was responsible.

3. Was today's jump just coincidental?

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 8:45 am

Alek,

YES, Something obviously kicked in. Analysing our datapoints, though, I would not be inclined to believe that your link has had any effect yet.

This is why I think that way:

If you look at the position on 4/15 and look at the number of Bob's links reported for the same day, you'll see that Google reported 40 of his links YET we were in position 108 and no allinanchor. The first day Google listed the page the site came in at position 104.

To be honest, I think that what we are seeing today is a combination of some of the original links I put up and FINALLY credit for some of Bob's.

I would predict that if what you suspected was true than we really would not see anymore improvement in position because all of the links we have listed above have been accounted for.

The only advancement we would see now is when Google finds a few more of Bob's links and when Google finds Foxy's links that she will be adding tomorrow.

If ANYBODY sees a flaw in my thinking here PLEASE bring up your ideas now. This is the only way we can really learn from this.

Caryl

Arnica

Apr 18th 2004, 8:57 am

hulkster

Apr 18th 2004, 9:53 am

Alek,
YES, Something obviously kicked in. Analysing our datapoints, though, I would not be inclined to believe that your link has had any effect yet.

If you look at the position on 4/15 and look at the number of Bob's links reported for the same day, you'll see that Google reported 40 of his links YET we were in position 108 and no allinanchor. The first day Google listed the page the site came in at position 104.

Caryl

OK - again, my past experience has been a day or two delay and BAMM, things rocket on up. Note also that there are very few outbound links on my page, so I think that helps you. Unknow what PR7 "truly" means and I have no idea what type of theme Google would apply to my page.

I don't want to micro-analyze too much, but Googlebot didn't pick up the link until late at night, and I don't know how quickly that percolates into the various search results, but the timing is consistant with what I've seen in the past informally.

I.e. if I read things correctly, my link was added the morning of 4/16, Googlebot got it that evening, mcdar did NOT see it on 4/17 (what time BTW!), but did see it on 4/18 when there was also a resulting JUMP in rankings - that sounds like good correllation, but yea, other things are happening, so they may have kicked in too.

Have kinda lost track where you are in your "link collecting", but might be a good time to pause for a bit and let things stabilize (that was discussed earlier) - i.e. let everything you guys have done "settle" down.

Also, when I pull that link (sorry, I only promised to put up for a month! ;-), it will be interesting to see what differences, if any, that makes ... although I've seen SERP's "stick" for a while before they decline - seems to be a dampening function applied somehow.

We can also play the "fiddle with the anchor text" game that I suggested earlier when you guys are ready.

alek

hulkster

Apr 18th 2004, 9:58 am

Sounds like maybe the www.komar.org link kicked (that was some BIG movement! ;-) - I normally see this in a day or two in the SERP's, so interesting to me that consistant for external links too. You have two 4/17 data points - was that last one actually the 18th?

FYI: I have updated my included quote to reflect the 4/18 date since it appears that mcdar has updated his original data - i.e. I'm assuming he made a typo in the original posting.

BTW, as alluded to above, I don't want to micro-analyze too much, but what TIME are you doing your queries?

alek

compar

Apr 18th 2004, 10:04 am

Number of backlinks. I just did an accurate count of the pages in my InfoPool (http://www.compar.com/infopool) and it comes out to 48 pages. Three of these are new articles and while they have been cached by Google have not been assigned an PR yet. So they won't show up in a backlink search yet.

That means there are currently 45 pages with PR5 or PR6. So it will be interesting how long it takes Google to report them all.

digitalpoint

Apr 18th 2004, 10:06 am

All of my links are PR5 or PR6. The new link is PR7. I personally don't think the PR value of a link contributes anything to the relevancy value of the link. But if we argee that today's jump is because of this one additional link was it the PR7 that was responsible.

I would argue on the side that PageRank does have a factor in determining the relevancy.

If you look at the links on the main page of digitalpoint.com, pretty much everything ranks top 5 for whatever anchor text is used...

search engine forum
keyword suggestion tool
free web counter (top 20, but was 45ish before the link)
google adsense (was top 5 for awhile)
search engine script
search engine position

- Shawn

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 10:21 am

Today's Results

Well we have certainly seen a dramatic leap in the SERPs today. Now the question? Were we on track for this, or is this the result of the one additional backlink?

Here are some of the problems in intepreting these results.

1. All of my links are from a single domain -- run of the site type links. While obviously they were promoting the site, the new link is from a separate domain on a different IP block. So did the fact that it is from a different site give it extra importance?

2. All of my links are PR5 or PR6. The new link is PR7. I personally don't think the PR value of a link contributes anything to the relevancy value of the link. But if we argee that today's jump is because of this one additional link was it the PR7 that was responsible.

3. Was today's jump just coincidental?
__________________
Bob Wakfer

Bob,

My gut says it was coincidental. I do find it hard to beleive, myself, that a single PR7 is worth that much more than 38 to 40 PR5 and 6's.

BUT, lets just say for the moment that it is. My next question would have to be HOW MUCH MORE?

Google had time to discover and chew on 38 to 40 GOOD links. YET, there really was not that much movement in the serps.

Then along comes one PR7 and the page jumps 60 positions. I still maintain that IF the PR7 link had that much effect within hours of it's discovery, then we can only assume that every other link thus far has been weighed in and accounted for as well. If this is the case, we should see virtually no more movement until Foxy's links come into play. (of course there will be small movement back and forth 4-5 positions -but no more real gains).

compar

Apr 18th 2004, 10:22 am

and I have no idea what type of theme Google would apply to my page.
alek

That is another commonly held claim -- that Google gives extra value to links from pages with relevant themes or content.

I think Google would like to do this, and I think that is what they tried in the Florida update, but I think they have abandoned it for now and that the only thing they are using for relevance is anchor text. That in my opinion is another test within this test. Except for McDar's internal links all other links are from pages without any possible relevance to sleeping bags.

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 10:32 am

I would argue on the side that PageRank does have a factor in determining the relevancy.

If you look at the links on the main page of digitalpoint.com, pretty much everything ranks top 5 for whatever anchor text is used...

search engine forum
keyword suggestion tool
free web counter (top 20, but was 45ish before the link)
google adsense (was top 5 for awhile)
search engine script
search engine position

- Shawn

Shawn,
I would have to say that I agree with you regarding PR playing a big part, HOWEVER,
you are looking at the advantage your tools have of being located within a Large site and that site has a high PR which adds weight to it's pages.

In the case of the experimental page, it is located on a small site (256 pages) and the site is a PR6. The PR7 is a single link from another website.

I have seen time and again that site size does add conciderable advantage in the serps.

I guess a way to prove this one way or another would be to replicate this by pointing one single PR7 anchor text specific link to another struggling page and see if the magic bullet works there.

It would be a quick experiment as it only took Google less than 2 days to find Alek link.

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 10:40 am

That is another commonly held claim -- that Google gives extra value to links from pages with relevant themes or content.

I think Google would like to do this, and I think that is what they tried in the Florida update, but I think they have abandoned it for now and that the only thing they are using for relevance is anchor text. That in my opinion is another test within this test. Except for McDar's internal links all other links are from pages without any possible relevance to sleeping bags.

EXACTLY, Bob! This is a VERY important piece of information.

I agree with you 100% regarding these "theories" being tossed about regarding only getting links from sites within your category/theme and "too much of the same anchor text will hurt you".

We may have an opportunity to prove or disprove them here.

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 11:32 am

Hi Caryl et al

Great experiment - strangely echoing something I started myself a few weeks back. Caryl may have noticed my use of the tool recently to check the Allinanchor position.

I have noticed the same steady rise in the allinanchor results as each new backlink is added/discovered confirming that G is using the data before a Backlink update takes place.

The only difference being that G doesn't yet show the page in the SERPs (probably as the domain is very recent). I'm continuing to 'grow' the allinanchor results to see what impact that has if and when the page hits the main SERPs.

URL and anchor text in sig.

Keep up the good work.

Mick

Hi Mick and WELCOME!

I hope you don't think I was ignoring you.

I just took a look at your site with the keyword tool using web site design uk as the keywords (not certain what your target is) and you look to be heading in the right direction.

There are some big players at the top but also a few smaller sites that you certainly could match numbers with in a relative small amount of time.

There definately is a similarity between this experiment page in that this is also a relatively small site fighting to get in amongst the "big guys".

I kind of think of it as a featherweight boxer gearing up for a bout with a heavyweight boxer. You have to overcome the size difference by becoming much stronger and much smarter.

One way, I think we are proving here is to MAXIMIZE your anchortext.

I had been building links for my main page, prior to this experiment, and was using sleeping bags and tents - Mcdar for the anchor text for sites to use as the link. (now, I now there are other factors at play, but) That page was at position 365 in the serps for sleeping bags when I started. I had managed to push it up to position 202 (as of today). Now that is a lot of progress BUT, if you do a search for sleeping bags and tents it has moved from nowhere to position #3!

The reason I chose to start a whole new page instead of persisting with this one is that this page had the backlinks to it diluted with many links from directories which just mentioned the mcdar, etc. It seemed it would take many more links with very specific anchortext to turn that around than to just start fresh with every link in the anchor.

Thus, today...
new page position#29 allinanchor score of #14 (brand new internal page)
old page position#202 allinanchor score of #26 (site's main index page)

Good luck and certainly feel free to join in the discussion here.

Caryl

hulkster

Apr 18th 2004, 11:56 am

FYI Guys: Please remember that what date/time you add your link(s) to your pages is irrelevent - what REALLY matters is when GoogleBot comes and finds it. For instance, I added the www.komar.org link at 0645 MDT on April 16th ... and Googlebot didn't spider it until 2225 MDT that evening as part of his daily visits. I'd suggest that it's an important data point to keep track of as I'm not sure that everyone is spider'ed daily.

Since Mcdar says my link was "Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)", we can set an upper bound for the propogation from GoogleBot to the Data Centers. I've mentioned before that if we wanted to micro-analyze, it would be interesting to know what TIME (MDT is GMT-6) on 4/18 that you found my link active?

alek

P.S. I got a chuckle out of Shawn's comments on the links from www.digitalpoint.com - I'll bet that page is a PR7.99 ... and would be real surprised if it doesn't go PR8 in the next update, which means it may allready be so internally.

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 12:32 pm

Alek,
I am not certain of the time but I generally check around 7:30 am EST. This is not to say that it was not showing up on Google had I looked at 10:pm the evening before.
I think the best we can hope for here is correlational data. When you focus too closely one one thing, you tend to lose the focus of the overall picture.
As I have said before, to prove the value of your link, you could do one of two things. You could link out to a similar page in a similar manner and see if it has as dramatic effect. Or, you could simply remove your link to the experiment page and we will watch to see what effect it has.

bpal

Apr 18th 2004, 2:27 pm

I have a couple of questions regarding this experiment. First, to the person with the PR 7 site. What effects has it had linking it to other sites of your own? Does it really carry that much weight? And second, Bob's links are mainly from the same domain he stated. Do links from the same domain carry that much weight? The reason I ask is because I have a few sites, and I typically don't link the internal pages out to the other index pages on different sites that I own. I just recently started doing it a little more the other day. I'm scared to do it too much in case them being on the same ip will hurt anything. However, my girlfriend's sites are on a different deal with the same host. I could just link over a hundred pages to her easily this way. So again, do links on the same domain carry weight still?

Oh, and I've emailed a few people with PR 7 sites for a link exchange, if they end up giving me a link, if I see results quick enough, I'll try to post them if I'm still reading this thread. Might not be as controlled of an experiment, but maybe it'll still help.

Arnica

Apr 18th 2004, 2:55 pm

Thanks Caryl

I think you're right in that it demonstrates an effective method for the little guys to compete. I set about my experiment to see how long it would take (and what it would take) to reach first page for a fairly competitive term with a new site.

Interestingly I've just rechecked my figures and have jumped 20 places immediately after G picked up a link from a new internal page. I'm wary of jumping to conclusions but the results had been reasonably constant until I added the page to the site a couple of days ago. Maybe enough encouragement for bpal to try more internal links?

I had just added another page today before the change in the allinanchor results so it will be interesting if I get the same kick in two days time after G picks up the page tomorrow. I will let you know.

Mick

bpal

Apr 18th 2004, 3:31 pm

Thanks for that insight. Hopefully that will work for you. If things look good, I've got around 200 pages or so that I can kick links towards my girlfriend's sites and see what happens. They are only around PR 2 and 3, but I don't think they really have any outbound links, only inbound back up the tree on the same site. I'd link them to my own, and I have a little, but I don't want to get hit by the search engines for cross linking too much. So my girlfriend's sites will be what I try it on even if they are off topic.

compar

Apr 18th 2004, 5:39 pm

So my girlfriend's sites will be what I try it on even if they are off topic.

If you are worried about links from the same IP block then you may not want to link to your girlfriend's site. You said earlier that it is on the same server as your page. In this case it is probably on the same IP block. Remeber there are 256 IPs in a full block. The first 3 sets of numbers are the same for every IP in the block.

However I don't think Google is checking this. It would mean they were using either Local Rank or Hilltop technology and there is no good eveidence that they are.

Remember though, what is different about the McDar experiment is that while all 48 of my links come from the same web site, and therefore the same IP, they are on a completely different IP block than the target site.

compar

Apr 18th 2004, 5:47 pm

FYI Guys: Please remember that what date/time you add your link(s) to your pages is irrelevent - what REALLY matters is when GoogleBot comes and finds it. For instance, I added the www.komar.org link at 0645 MDT on April 16th ... and Googlebot didn't spider it until 2225 MDT that evening as part of his daily visits. I'd suggest that it's an important data point to keep track of as I'm not sure that everyone is spider'ed daily.

Alek,

I don't really see the relevance or importance to this timing discussion to the experiment. The results will only be meaningful over time. Regardless of when you posted and when Google crawled your site we can't be sure that the big jump is directly related.

The data over the next few days will help us reach our conclusions, but the timing of the bot either on GMT of local time is probably not really germane to this experiment.

bpal

Apr 18th 2004, 6:51 pm

That's a good point about the ip blocks. Thanks for sheading some light on the subject (I don't know much about them). I'll need to look more into that.

hulkster

Apr 18th 2004, 8:03 pm

Alek,

I don't really see the relevance or importance to this timing discussion to the experiment. The results will only be meaningful over time. Regardless of when you posted and when Google crawled your site we can't be sure that the big jump is directly related.

The data over the next few days will help us reach our conclusions, but the timing of the bot either on GMT of local time is probably not really germane to this experiment.

What I was trying to say Bob is that I changed my link at 0645 on 4/16 and Googlebot crawled my main index.html 16 hours later. If Googlebot had NOT crawled my page yet, then there would have been ZERO input from my link so far, and there is no way that my PR7 link could have caused the big jump in ranking seen shortly after my link was not only crawled, but did show up in Google.

Just to be really clear, I am not saying it is conclusive that the PR7 DID cause the jump in rankings, but again, if Googlebot had NOT crawled me yet, I could say pretty much for sure that was NOT the case.

I don't know how frequently other web sites are crawled, but the "clock starts" when your page is crawled, not when you make the change - this may be significantly longer than a daily crawl for other people (can you and/or others share any data?) and I think has possible bearing on trying to determine cause/effect.

I agree over time that it all gets "absorbed" and shows up eventually, but I think you guys are trying to match certain changes in file-contents/back-links/etc. to changes in Google various rankings.

alek

mcdar

Apr 18th 2004, 9:05 pm

Alek,

I think I know where the misunderstanding is here. The only reason I want to know when a link goes up is so I will know WHEN to start including a search for evidence of that link in Google.

This is a section of my daily update...
number of Bob's links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
__________________

Every morning I perform this search on the datacenter tool
site:www.compar.com +sleeping bags

This search gives me ONLY the pages found in Googles index that are located on Bob's site that INCLUDE the words sleeping bags on the page. Since there is NOWHERE else on his site that sleeping bags is mentioned, the results are only the pages with the links.

You will note that on 4/17/2004 I found that Google had listed 37 pages of Bob's that had sleeping bags on the page.

It does not matter when these links where actually spidered all we are interested in is whether Google has them listed that day. If you look closely, you will see that numbers have been fluctuating from day to day. This is most likely due to the fact that some are still only showing up due to freshbot visits and really not indexed yet.

One advantage a PR7 page may have over a lower PR page, is that it probably receives freshbot visits more frequently.

Does this make sense to you?

Caryl

hulkster

Apr 18th 2004, 9:44 pm

I guess I'm confused - I've been looking at this data you have been posting:

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]

__________________

Alek's Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)

Isn't the above information gathered by doing a "regular" search for "sleeping bags" (and then one using allinanchor) and seeing where the www.mcdar.com sleeping bag page ranks. I.e. aren't we all linking to the www.mcdar.com sleeping bag page and what we are interested in is seeing what actions cause a raise in the rankings.

The "site:" search you mention above just shows which sites/pages have been spidered and "recognized" by Google. www.compar.com happens to have a bunch of 'em and it appears it took a little while for 'em to all show up in Google (assuming all added/spidered at the same time - you might check the later). www.komar.org only has one link and we saw mine showed up in two days - that's fairly easy to see.

What is the $64,000 question is: if you add link XYZ, how and when does it "ripple" through the Google ranking system and affect the rankings of the target page, with the allinchor position being a possible secondary indicator of relative importance? The data I quoted above shows something "significant" happened between 4/17 and 4/18 - can we isolate what it was?!? ;-)

alek

P.S. I agree with you that one definition of when the "clock starts" is when it shows up in Google using your "site: search" ... but I suspect that's probably not very long ONCE your site has been crawled - this may be a fixed time (my guess) or it may be a function of the importance of your site - I've never tested that, since once the page is spidered, Google seems to "have" it withen a day or two - if you still have the historical data for each of the www.compar.com pages, it might be illuminating to cross-reference against when the googlebot spider'ed 'em - my guess is they all showed up with 2-3 days AFTER the spider (not neccessary after you added 'em). Another easy way to test this is next time you add/update a page, do a Google Search a few days later for a complete sentance or two that you added (shouldn't have to say site if unique enough) and I bet it will show up.

I think I'm confusing/clouding the issue, so maybe I'll sit back for a bit and see how things develop - again, what is very interesting to me if the effect of a link on the SERP's (and allinanchor) with a secondary interest of how fast does this occur.

Foxy

Apr 19th 2004, 12:11 am

Your link from the PR5 is up and one from a PR4 on the same site but in a Number 1 position and one PR4 in a number 2 position same keyword phrase - "snowboard France"

Would you like more? :D

mcdar

Apr 19th 2004, 4:13 am

Thank you FOXY!

Please let me know the urls of the links so I can add them to my daily search.

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 19th 2004, 4:39 am

Foxy

Apr 19th 2004, 6:51 am

Links are

http://www.ski-france-ok.com/
http://www.ski-france-ok.com/skijobs.htm
http://www.ski-france-ok.com/skifrokjobsframe.htm

mcdar

Apr 19th 2004, 7:08 am

Thank you, Foxy!

I will add the search ( site:www.ski-france-ok.com +sleeping bags ) to tomorrows update post.

I have just preformed the search and it currently returns zero results, as expected.

Caryl

schlottke

Apr 19th 2004, 8:08 pm

I'll add a PR5 Link from www.wrestling-connection.com if this is still being done.

mcdar

Apr 20th 2004, 5:10 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm
04/07/2004 "New Page" went live

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004
Postion#133 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/14/2004
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#28 allinanchor:#13 - 04/19/2004 [ 5 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#29 allinanchor:#15 - 04/20/2004 [16 datacenters #25, 6 datacenters #27]
_____________________________________________________
note: these pages are found using ( site:www.compar.com +sleeping Bags )
number of Bob's PR6 and PR5 links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
38 - 4/18/2004 (10 datacenters report 37, 16 report 32, the rest - 37)
48 - 4/19/2004 (7 datacenters report 47, the rest - 48)
50 - 4/20/2004 (9 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.komar.org +sleeping Bags )
Alek's PR 7 Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/19/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/20/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.ski-france-ok.com +sleeping Bags )
Foxy's PR5 and two PR4s
0 - 4/20/2004
__________________
# of Links from my posts to this thead
69 4/17/2004 [Edited to remove 20 posts in this thread that did not have link]
75 - 4/18/2004
90 - 4/19/2004
93 - 4/20/2004
__________________
Caryl's Links [links posted 04/07/2004]
2 PR6s & 5 PR5's (no way of telling which are accounted for)

mcdar

Apr 20th 2004, 5:59 am

I would like to point out that, since our big jump from #92 to #29 on 4/18/2004, Google has recorded an additional 12 of Bob's links but there has been no notable movement in the page's position.

mcdar

Apr 20th 2004, 7:00 am

Update Addition:

For what it is worth...

The "New Page" just came up today #3 for a search on Sleeping Bags in YAHOO!

I have no clue why... I do NOT understand how Yahoo! works yet.

note: I have been monitoring it's "sister page" [Nebo Sleeping Bags] who was struggling at ~position #155 ("she is nowhere to be found now for the search in Yahoo!)

compar

Apr 20th 2004, 7:49 am

Update Addition:

The "New Page" just came up today #3 for a search on Sleeping Bags in YAHOO!

I'm not surprised. Have you seen this article on Yahoo Bombing (http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20040414YahooGetsTheirWafflesBombed.html).

It appears from these results that Yahoo just might be taking more notice of backlinks right now than Google.

What is interesting about this is that a lot of people have said that the way to optimize for Yahoo is to add more content and have even higher keyword density. The Sleeping Bags page in fact is deficient as far as on page content goes. There are no <H> tags and there is no body of text content that features our keyword phrase.

What we should do when we are satisfied that we have learned all we can from this test is add these on-page elements and see what happens to the Yahoo ranking.

Foxy

Apr 20th 2004, 8:00 am

The section of ski france has not been updated by google since 18th so I would guess at today for an update

the section for ski jobs france has not been updated [except us on the 18th] for some time

Will let you know when they do

PS Meant to say that the PR5 is also in Yahoo directory, DMOZ and Google Directory

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 4:27 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm
04/07/2004 "New Page" went live

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004
Postion#133 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/14/2004
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#28 allinanchor:#13 - 04/19/2004 [ 5 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#29 allinanchor:#15 - 04/20/2004 [16 datacenters #25, 6 datacenters #27]
Postion#25 allinanchor:#7 - 04/21/2004 [All datacenters]
_____________________________________________________
note: these pages are found using ( site:www.compar.com +sleeping Bags )
number of Bob's PR6 and PR5 links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
38 - 4/18/2004 (10 datacenters report 37, 16 report 32, the rest - 37)
48 - 4/19/2004 (7 datacenters report 47, the rest - 48)
50 - 4/20/2004 (9 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
50 - 4/21/2004 (7 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.komar.org +sleeping Bags )
Alek's PR 7 Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/19/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/20/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/21/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.ski-france-ok.com +sleeping Bags )
Foxy's PR5 and two PR4s
0 - 4/20/2004
1 - 4/21/2004
__________________
# of Links from my posts to this thead
69 4/17/2004 [Edited to remove 20 posts in this thread that did not have link]
75 - 4/18/2004
90 - 4/19/2004
93 - 4/20/2004
97 - 4/21/2004
__________________
Caryl's Links [links posted 04/07/2004]
2 PR6s & 5 PR5's (no way of telling which are accounted for)
__________________

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 4:48 am

I'll add a PR5 Link from www.wrestling-connection.com if this is still being done.

Hello schlottke,

Thank you so much for the offer!

I think, at this point, we should not add any additional links to this experiment and just see where everything, so far, takes us.

But, I would like to keep your offer in reserve and use it to "tweek" the results down the road. If that is okay with you.

Thanks again for your support!!!!

Caryl

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 5:12 am

There are many theories that have taken hold around the SEO Forums that this experiment may proove false! (or true)

1. One I have heard discussed is to AVOID getting links from sites that are not "related" to or in the same "theme" as your own.
---All but 8 links to the "new page" are from sites NOT RELATED to the "theme" of the page/site. ( I have actually seen people ask for links to their sites to be removed because of the notion that it will HARM there position)

2. Another theory I have seen is that "you must vary or alternate your anchor text - too much of the same and you will be penalized".
--- 100% of the links to this page say only sleeping bags

3. "You must keep your keyword density LOW to avoid spam filters"
--- the keyword density of the "new page" is 15.35% for sleeping bags

[edited to add]
4. "multiple links from an external site have little value"
--- 50 of the links to this page are from one site
Please note: that a reference to multiple links from a single site may well be about extensive crosslinking - this is not the case here and this experiment does NOT address that issue.

5. "placement of links on a page can have a big effect"
--- most all of the links to this page are at the bottom of the pages.
Please note: often times this "placement" issue is regarding link pages with more than 100k of text. - this is not the case here and this experiment does NOT address that issue.

6. "PR/Backlink updates is when you will see the serps change due to the addition of Backlinks and PR.
--- the new page has made significant progress prior to any updates.
Please note: we do not yet know if, once the update does occur, most likely sometime this weekend, if we will see a boost simply because we have some PR versus none at all.

[end of edit]
If there are filters for these things, apparently they have not yet been applied.

If anybody can think of any others, let me know and I will add them to the list.

compar

Apr 21st 2004, 7:21 am

Caryl,

A related issue that you missed is the contention that multiple links from a single site do not have value. The 50 link from my InfoPool (http://www.compar.com/infopool/index.html) are all on a single site and certainly don't seem to have hurt the experiment.

The other issue is the position of link on the page. All the links on my pages are at the very bottom and are placed via a server side include file.

We changed the title, to start with our prime keyword phrase, early in the experiment. So we cannot judge the influence of this as a separate variable, but I suspect that it has played a part in our success.

And finally the thing that has been proven conclusively is that SERP placement is totally unrelated to the publishing of the PR and backlink updates. Many people impatiently wait for these upgrades thinking that their SERP placement will improve as soon as the update is published. These two factors are obviously unrelated.

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 9:27 am

Another Update Addition:

I just saw an entry in my logs for a search on Google for sleeping bag (singular).

Since we have not targeted the singular version, I have not checked for it.

When I just looked on Google, I was surprised to find the the "new page" is in position#14 for sleeping bag!

compar

Apr 21st 2004, 9:47 am

It's called stemming. On one of my sites I rank higher for the plural than I do for the singular and I am optimized exclusively for the singular.

So one more proof -- Google is using stemming in their relevancy calculation.

One of the other thing we can test for down the road is the impact of <h> tags. I don't think you are using any on the page at the moment, but it would not be unreasonable to enclose all the picture titles or descriptions in heading tags.

I mentioned earlier that we didn't have much content and of course that isn't absolutely correct. Each picture title is content. But another thing to test for would be to write a couple of parargraphs about what people will find on the page and why they should buy from McDar. This might actually lower the keyword density a bit, but it would be interesting to see if it made any difference.

Foxy

Apr 21st 2004, 10:04 am

Its from the allinurl, BUT!!!!

www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm

the "sleeping-bag" bit is hilited [Compar is right about the stemming]

If you go and do a search for "sleeping bags" using the very useful McDar tool allin's , I've listed it here for convenience, Hehe

http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php

you will see that you are

7 allintext
7 allinanchor
2 allinurl

BUT if you do that with "sleeping bag"

you are not there - now that means that G has a two tier way of determining allinurl - does it not!!
:confused:

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 10:28 am

Foxy,

I have noticed that if you use plural, Google will include in singular, BUT I don't see it for singular to plural.

If you do a search for allinanchor:sleeping bag (singular) you will see the #1 position comes up in in the regular search for sleeping bag in #10 spot. Note: that page!

Now do a search for sleeping bags... That page is NOWHERE to be found!

compar

Apr 21st 2004, 10:38 am

Foxy,

I have noticed that if you use plural, Google will include in singular, BUT I don't see it for singular to plural.

The singular to plural is exactly what has happened to my site. The site is highly optimized for
Online Pharmacy (http://www.yourfriendlypharmacy.com). But for the singular it ranks #38 and for Online Pharmacies it ranks #20.

So stemming works both ways I'm sure.

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 10:47 am

Bob,

After I posted my last reply I thought of a perfectly logical reason as to why that page would NOT be listed for the plural form...

They probably optimized another page for the plural that would omit that one from the results.

BUT, I just checked and they did not. No pages on that site come up in the results for a search on sleeping bags!

You would think that if you are #1 for allinanchor (singular version) that you would come up somewhere for the plural version...

bpal

Apr 21st 2004, 10:51 am

So we might not have to wait for the PR update to see the effects? So when we find links online, we could get immediate results as long as google finds the links pretty much? So basically all that we have to wait for is google to cache the page?

Now what about deeper pages? Does google do a deepcrawl around a week prior to the PR toolbar (I say toolbar to separate it from the routine PR updates if they actually are going on), or is the deepcrawling of sites going on at different times for each site?

I read about deepcrawling going on last week I think, but I still haven't really looked closely enough to see if my sites were deepcrawled yet. Is there any pattern to this?

mcdar

Apr 21st 2004, 10:57 am

bpal,

It has been my own personal experience to put up a link to a new page and even though I find evidence in my logs that Google has spidered and even cached the page with the new link on it, Google has NOT necessarily followed that link to the new page.

Yes, how deep Google is actually spidering is a factor.

mcdar

Apr 22nd 2004, 4:19 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm
04/07/2004 "New Page" went live

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004
Postion#133 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/14/2004
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#28 allinanchor:#13 - 04/19/2004 [ 5 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#29 allinanchor:#15 - 04/20/2004 [16 datacenters #25, 6 datacenters #27]
Postion#25 allinanchor:#7 - 04/21/2004 [All datacenters]
Postion#18 allinanchor: #7 - 04/22/2004 [10 datacenters #19]
_____________________________________________________
note: these pages are found using ( site:www.compar.com +sleeping Bags )
number of Bob's PR6 and PR5 links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
38 - 4/18/2004 (10 datacenters report 37, 16 report 32, the rest - 37)
48 - 4/19/2004 (7 datacenters report 47, the rest - 48)
50 - 4/20/2004 (9 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
50 - 4/21/2004 (7 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
51 - 4/22/2004 (12 datacenters report 48, 5 datacenters report 50, the rest - 51)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.komar.org +sleeping Bags )
Alek's PR 7 Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/19/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/20/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/21/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/22/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.ski-france-ok.com +sleeping Bags )
Foxy's PR5 and two PR4s
0 - 4/20/2004
1 - 4/21/2004
1 - 4/22/2004
__________________
# of Links from my posts to this thead
69 4/17/2004 [Edited to remove 20 posts in this thread that did not have link]
75 - 4/18/2004
90 - 4/19/2004
93 - 4/20/2004
97 - 4/21/2004
104 - 4/22/2004
__________________
Caryl's Links [links posted 04/07/2004]
2 PR6s & 5 PR5's (no way of telling which are accounted for)
__________________

compar

Apr 22nd 2004, 5:06 am

BUT if you do that with "sleeping bag"

you are not there - now that means that G has a two tier way of determining allinurl - does it not!!
:confused:
I don't have a problem with those results. The fact of the matter is that "sleeping bag" singular, is not in any URL, or anchortext. So Google is reporting that correctly.

However when it comes to determining which sites are relevant for a search for "sleeping bag" there is nothing to stop Google from determining that a site with many reference to "bags" must also be relevant for "bag".

The point, I think, is that the algorithm and ranking tools that Google uses for SERP placement are not necessarily the same or limited to the tools they give us for research purposes.

mcdar

Apr 22nd 2004, 5:30 am

The point, I think, is that the algorithm and ranking tools that Google uses for SERP placement are not necessarily the same or limited to the tools they give us for research purposes.

Bob,

I agree! Yesterday someone reported seeing that the results in one datacenter for a search for link:www.domain.com was returning "old" data.

Indeed, when I did that search for my site, it did return the backlink count prior to the last update (April 7). But, if you did a regular search on the same datacenter, It returned the "new page" in it's current position!

It is important to note the the "new page" did not go live until April 7th, so if ALL of the info was old, the site would not have come up at all.

This again, points to evidence that Google is using data, other than what we can view, to perform it's algo on and determine results.

Well, speak of the devil...
You can see this for yourselves, right now on datacenter 216.239.53.99 !!!

... A search for link:www.mcdar.com is showing only 124 Backlinks (at this moment) that is OLD yet, the new page is coming up in the regular search for sleeping bags, at today's position #18.

compar

Apr 22nd 2004, 5:56 am

I think this is a very important concept and worth a little more pontification on my part.

Google's raison d'etre, or mission in life, is to return the most relevant pages for any search. The problem we all have is that we have no idea how they calculate relevancy. They do not provide any tool called "allinrelevancy:". The only evidence we have is the SERP itself.

So why do we expect that the things we can measure, or even things they report, to have a 1 on 1 relationship to the SERP ranking? First I'm sure that Google uses many many factors. When we do an allinanchor or an allinurl or whatever we are only seeing a fraction of what Google may be using. Take stemming which we discussed earlier in this thread. There is no tool provided by Google to measure stemming, but clearly they are using it.

Now lets discuss the most misunderstood measurement that Google gives us -- PR. We have proved above that Google is using links to evaluate and position a site in the SERPs long before they report the PR figure to us. And yet there are people who impatiently wait for the PR update, because they are sure that then, and only then, are all those links taken into account.

Then there are people who are convinced that SERP placement is directly related to PR. It isn't, and it can't be, and here are the reasons why. PR is a mathematical number calculated from the shared PR of all interlinked sites. It is indicative of the number of links a site has, but it has nothing necessarily to do with the relevancy of the site.

Remember the second paragraph in this epistle -- Google is indexing pages in their SERPs based on relevancy. PR doesn't measure relevancy. Therefore PR cannot be a prime driver of SERP placement.

mcdar

Apr 22nd 2004, 5:58 am

The whole bank of datacenters (in - 216.239.53.xxx) are showing OLD backlink info right now.

I wonder if they are getting ready for this weekends PR/Backlink update!

(April 25 will be 18 days since the last update and put it dead on Googles recent PR/Backlink update schedule)

mcdar

Apr 22nd 2004, 6:06 am

Bob,

You may have missed my point! A datacenter is only reporting X amount of Backlinks, in this case indicating OLD Cached info., yet ranking a page that was NOT in the index at that point in time.

Google must store link info separately and searches within a datacenter are not all accessing the same data. Thus a regular search is using one dataset and a search for link: is accessing another dataset.

compar

Apr 22nd 2004, 6:21 am

No I don't think I missed the point. I think that is exactly what I was saying. Google uses a lot of stuff that we don't know about or have access to.

It's like two parallel universes. All we can do is guess what is in the Google universe and there certainly isn't any one tools or measurement that is going to tell us how they position a page in the their SERPs.

Foxy

Apr 22nd 2004, 8:20 am

Absolutely Compar

This parallel universe is showing up here more and more - just yesterday my mind went, after posting this now that means that G has a two tier way of determining allinurl - does it not!! , that what google is doing is keeping two systems running with one overlaying the other and that is why sometimes we see the "old" results as an update is occurring in the new overlay as McDar reported.

On the other issue of PR and effect we know it doesn't have any effect from the positions and timing shown in this experiment - but I have noticed that the downward movement stopped at around 29 for a few days and then started moving again after new links were put in [by me] last Monday - now that suggests that a program of "building" links on a daily basis would have a more positive effect than a "dump" or perhaps an initial dump and then trickling on [as has been done here] is the best way to push the page to the top!

What does ya think? :)

compar

Apr 22nd 2004, 9:55 am

- now that suggests that a program of "building" links on a daily basis would have a more positive effect than a "dump" or perhaps an initial dump and then trickling on [as has been done here] is the best way to push the page to the top!

What does ya think? :)

Well it is very hard to tell for sure. But I would agree that adding links should be an ongoing and perpetual task. Because your competitor is probably adding links daily and if you don't you stand to be overtaken.

Even the initial "dump" as you call it wasn't picked up all in one day. It took several days for them all to be found, and infact I have added 3 or 4 more pages to my InfoPool since the beginning so even links from my site can be said to be trickling in. The new pages haven't got any reported PR yet but that apparently hasn't prevented them from being found and making a contribution.

And then there is the daily add of the links in Caryl's signature from this forum. So there has been a constant stream of new links added daily from the very beginning.

The interesting thing of course would be to stop adding any more links and see when and where this page plateaus out.

digitalpoint

Apr 22nd 2004, 10:14 am

I think everyone is over complicating everything... :)

As soon as people start doing things with the intention of "tricking" Google into better rankings (whether it be artificial linking, or the most perfectly crafted [as far as SEO goes] on-page factors), Google can pick up on it.

In my opinion the best long term SEO is to simply use common sense, but not overdo it. Anything you do that is "too perfect" will eventually be picked up on. For me, SEO means thinking about what I put in my <TITLE> tags, maybe <H1> tags (depending on the page), and then I'm done with it. The rest of the page is written for the user, and I forget about what the search engine "wants".

I originally did it that way because I was lazy. But lately I'm starting to think that "lazy" SEO is better in the long term because I really wasn't affected by Florida, Austin, Brandy, etc.

I'm not talking just about digitalpoint.com either... other sites with little content have been the same for me. An example is ccapplication.com which ranks #3 for credit card application(s), and #4 for apply for credit card(s). Which I would say are at least mildly competitive in the SEO world. Same thing applies though. I really didn't spend much time on SEO... it was my first attempt at anything to do with SEO and from a "perfect SEO" perspective it's terrible.

Maybe there is long term perfection in imperfection... who knows...

- Shawn

compar

Apr 22nd 2004, 10:52 am

I think everyone is over complicating everything... :)
- Shawn

I agree basically with what you said in your full message, but I would be interested in where you see our experiment as being over complicated. We had a bit of that when Alex was obsessing over the exact time of being crawled etc, but short of that we changed the title on the page and then got on with link building.

I think this experiment has been the model of simplification. Where people have been looking for siver bullets, and one to one cause and effect realtionships, we have tried to explain that there are none. We have defused much of the urban myth about PR. If this experiment is anything, I think it is KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.

mcdar

Apr 22nd 2004, 12:19 pm

I think everyone is over complicating everything...

As soon as people start doing things with the intention of "tricking" Google into better rankings (whether it be artificial linking, or the most perfectly crafted [as far as SEO goes] on-page factors), Google can pick up on it.

Shawn,

Could you be more specific regarding the statement above? Was your comment regarding this whole experiment or a specific topic being discussed?

Thank you,
Caryl

digitalpoint

Apr 22nd 2004, 1:13 pm

Just generalized... not really specific towards the experiment.

- Shawn

hulkster

Apr 22nd 2004, 7:49 pm

I'm not talking just about digitalpoint.com either... other sites with little content have been the same for me. An example is ccapplication.com which ranks #3 for credit card application(s), and #4 for apply for credit card(s). Which I would say are at least mildly competitive in the SEO world.

Maybe there is long term perfection in imperfection... who knows...

- Shawn

Ummmmm ... the whois data for ccapplication.com looks ever so slightly familier ....

BTW, in another thread you mentioned a lotta Email spam going to your register contact information - looks like you have a new Email address - nobody@localhost.com - how much spam Email have you been getting to that?

alek

P.S. If you classify those as terms as "mildly competitive" (I looked 'em up on Overture's and Adwords), then my stuff doesn't even qualify as doggie scraps.

PPS. I think your last sentance is pretty darn good advice ...

Foxy

Apr 22nd 2004, 11:56 pm

Uh huh

Sometime back in the last century [thanks compar] I started out by just plonking pages down and building site content to where I got to 2500 pages [doesn't have that now] - I grabbed from places - I created - I went like the clappers without once thinking about SEO because I realised that my clients [all of one type] needed an all in one guide. This worked so well that I ended up with the knowledge that it is quantity is one way that will drive a site to the top.

However when I needed to be more specific to different people, that became more difficult and like the new millenium I had to find new ways and I turned to SEO, just like you Shawn in August/September of last year when you said on another forum that you were new to SEO [can't find the quote], and I found some interesting and contradictory results when compared to what other SEOs were saying.

So in some ways this is an extension of that drive and, although we waver around a little the essential truth is still there and what makes this Forum [obviously led by the boss] different in that people are willing to experiment with ideas.

So I agree with Compar, Mcdar, Alek that in fact I think this definitely kiss

http://www.deli-world.com/graphics/logos/kiss-logo-200x130.jpg

BTW I have been running alongside this experiment another experiment [its called a double blind trial] using Weber BBQs (http://www.growlers-sausages.com/weber_bbqs.htm) - I have not detailed the experiment so far as I have been mirroring this experiment without outside links [only my own] and so far I am at 58 but I am No1 +2 for allintext and allinanchor but not showing on allinurl yet [which is a bit strange] but I seem to have stalled at the moment - so when we finish this one we will, perhaps see where the other is and make adjustments :D

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 12:11 am

Err.... read just got to 17+18 on Shawns KWT but it looks like it is just on

216.239.39.99
216.239.39.102
216.239.39.103
216.239.39.104
216.239.39.105
216.239.39.147

and this forum that raced to 6 has disappeared on this same block but is still there on the others :)

digitalpoint

Apr 23rd 2004, 12:24 am

Actually, I'm showing the forum ranks for weber bbqs on all data centers at #8, except for 216.239.39.99 which it's #4 and #5 (different pages than the other data centers).

- Shawn

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 1:56 am

Sorry didn't look closely at each listing on 216.239.39.99

Your right

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 4:58 am

I have tried to update my hosts file but it does not seem to help. Can anybody check and see if the experimant page (link below) got a PR rating?

compar

Apr 23rd 2004, 5:04 am

I don't know what datacenter I'm getting from my location in Canada, but the page is not showing any PR or any backlinks at the moment.

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 5:25 am

Thanks, Bob,

I discovered my problem - I had no actual hosts file, just a sample. I just created one and now I can see the updated PRs on the "new" datacenters.

The "new page" is now a PR5 with 49 Backlinks.

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 5:25 am

Same here on KWT

but on your tool

23.�www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm
272
49
7
562

but the 216.239.33.99 center is not responding right now and that is where I got the big changes this morning which showed up in KWT

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 5:28 am

BTW your showing at 19 on the .99 series
same on the "new"

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 5:43 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:
****Google PR/Backlink update started this AM and currently is in progress!

The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm
04/07/2004 "New Page" went live

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004
Postion#133 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/14/2004
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#28 allinanchor:#13 - 04/19/2004 [ 5 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#29 allinanchor:#15 - 04/20/2004 [16 datacenters #25, 6 datacenters #27]
Postion#25 allinanchor:#7 - 04/21/2004 [All datacenters]
Postion#18 allinanchor: #7 - 04/22/2004 [10 datacenters #19]
Postion #19 allinanchor: #7 - 04/23/2004 [7 datacenters #21]
_____________________________________________________
note: these pages are found using ( site:www.compar.com +sleeping Bags )
number of Bob's PR6 and PR5 links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
38 - 4/18/2004 (10 datacenters report 37, 16 report 32, the rest - 37)
48 - 4/19/2004 (7 datacenters report 47, the rest - 48)
50 - 4/20/2004 (9 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
50 - 4/21/2004 (7 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
51 - 4/22/2004 (12 datacenters report 48, 5 datacenters report 50, the rest - 51)
51 - 4/22/2004 (7 datacenters report 50, the rest - 51)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.komar.org +sleeping Bags )
Alek's PR 7 Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/19/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/20/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/21/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/22/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/23/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.ski-france-ok.com +sleeping Bags )
Foxy's PR5 and two PR4s
0 - 4/20/2004
1 - 4/21/2004
1 - 4/22/2004
1 - 4/23/2004
__________________
# of Links from my posts to this thead
69 4/17/2004 [Edited to remove 20 posts in this thread that did not have link]
75 - 4/18/2004
90 - 4/19/2004
93 - 4/20/2004
97 - 4/21/2004
104 - 4/22/2004
111 - 4/23/2004
__________________
Caryl's Links [links posted 04/07/2004]
2 PR6s & 5 PR5's (no way of telling which are accounted for)
__________________
PR/Backlink info (so far) from the 64.233.161.xxx bank of datacenters

sleeping-bags.htm has PR5
49 Backlinks
(backlinks reported in the 49)
5 of Caryl's links
42 of Bob's Links
1 of Foxy's Links
2 for Digitalpoint forums
Nothing for Alek's link(?)

digitalpoint

Apr 23rd 2004, 8:26 am

Just a side note... the PageRank/back link update really should not affect the placement, as Google already takes new links into account long before they are publicly reported. (Probably everyone knows that already now that I think about it).

- Shawn

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 8:31 am

Note that the PR4s are not showing - does that mean that G is only taking into consideration PR5 and above? :confused: :D

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 8:57 am

Foxy,

There are PR4s showing in the Backlink update! What I find incredible is that Alek's PR 7 link is NOT THERE!!!

Caryl

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 9:22 am

Are they coming from Bobs lot~?

hulkster

Apr 23rd 2004, 9:37 am

Foxy,

There are PR4s showing in the Backlink update! What I find incredible is that Alek's PR 7 link is NOT THERE!!!

Caryl

Maybe I got banned for too much Hulk'in?!? ;-)
alek

P.S. Feel free to do a "view source" on the page - I assure you it's exactly what it looks like - no "funky tricks", cloaking, or whatever - I don't do that stuff.

It is a little puzzling it doesn't show up - maybe it missed some sort of cut-off date for this update?

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 9:49 am

Aleks page is showing for me

Alek, Wendy, Dirk, and Kyle Komarnitsky Home Page

... what my IP address to Country with Flags; An SEO test to benefit Folding@Home: sleeping bags. UNIX Sysadmin Tools & Presentations.
www.komar.org/ - 7k - 21 Apr 2004 - Cached - Similar�pages

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 10:03 am

Hi Alek,

I did check out your page and everything is clean as a whistle!

Your page with the link showed it was cached by Google on 4/18, however, the link you added was the 53rd link on the page. Perhaps Google will not actually follow that link until some kind of deep crawl.

This VERY important for those following this thread to note: While we are trying to record as much information as possible, there is NO WAY that we can come up with anything but CORRELATONAL DATA. That is to say that we can not say that because two events happened ~the same time, day, whatever, that one influenced the other.

There are too many unknown and uncontroled variables to ever make that kind of statement here.

An example: Today, Google is doing a PR/Backlink update. Google is reporting 49 backlinks to the experiment page. We all know there are more. What we don;t really know nor ever will, is what pages does Google give credit for that Google is NOT reporting.

It is that unknown factor that leaves us still speculating.

By the nature of this experiment, we have attempted to "control for" some of the unknown factors that obscure most webpages.

We know the number of actual links to that page.
We know that there is only ONE anchor text being used.

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 10:09 am

Foxy,

I am referring to viewing the new Backlink information on

search for link:www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm (http://64.233.161.98/search?q=link:www.mcdar.com/camping1/sleeping-bags.htm&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=40&sa=N&filter=0url)

click the aove link to perform the seach on the 64.233.161.98 datacenter (one of the few updated currently)

Alek's site is NOT among those reported.

hulkster

Apr 23rd 2004, 10:16 am

Hi Alek,

I did check out your page and everything is clean as a whistle!

Your page with the link showed it was cached by Google on 4/18, however, the link you added was the 53rd link on the page. Perhaps Google will not actually follow that link until some kind of deep crawl.

Ummmmm ... I didn't realize I had that many links, although all but 5 point internally ... I should tidy this up a bit one of these days.

BTW, if you wanted me to move the location of the link so it is higher in the page, let me know. I promised I would leave it up for a month if you guys looked at the Goolge Compute page (http://www.powder2glass.com/Google_Toolbar_Compute/) and thanx all who have done so and consider helping out this good cause.

alek

P.S. Hulk glad to see he's not banned by Google.
That would make Hulk mad.
Hulk get strong when he get mad.
Hulk then want to SMASH.
Hulk not sure he could SMASH Google.

alek

bpal

Apr 23rd 2004, 10:59 am

digitalpoint

Apr 23rd 2004, 11:13 am

People saying SERPs will change (any more than any other day) are living in the past (about a year ago) when there was a monthly Google dance. Doesn't happen anymore because Google updates it's index daily.

Also, spidering happens daily as well. With the frequency based on the popularity of the site (links/PageRank primarily). This forum for example gets spidered daily (hourly actually). And more times than not, there is a Google Spider currently getting content. Which you can see at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/online.php

- Shawn

Foxy

Apr 23rd 2004, 11:55 am

I see a lot of Google adsense spider!!!!

and one MSN

hulkster

Apr 23rd 2004, 12:29 pm

Also, spidering happens daily as well. With the frequency based on the popularity of the site (links/PageRank primarily). This forum for example gets spidered daily (hourly actually). And more times than not, there is a Google Spider currently getting content. Which you can see at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/online.php

- Shawn

VERY cool link ...
alek

compar

Apr 23rd 2004, 2:21 pm

VERY cool link ...
alek
Alek,

Apparently you have never clicked on the items in the blue menu bar at the top of every page. Just click on Quick Links. You will find this and several other "cool links".

compar

Apr 23rd 2004, 2:30 pm

So if the backwards links are counted even before the PR update, why are some people saying that the serp results will be changing in a couple of days after the PR updates? Is that something different... settling in maybe?

Also, if we don't have to wait for PR update for the serps to reflect the backwards links, google only has to find them. Do different sites get deep crawled at different times or does google do it in one big hunk each month... or both?
bpal,

Didn't you ask the same question in message # 206 of this thread? Look at McDar's progress reports starting each day from the beginning of this experiment. The evidence is undeniable. From the second the links started to be cached and indexed the page started to move upwards in the SERPs.

There is a ton of bullshit out there about PR and backlinks. This experiment has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the PR/backlink upgrade has nothing whatsoever to do with the SERP placement. In fact it appears to just be housekeeping on Google's part long after they have adjusted the pages index.

mcdar

Apr 23rd 2004, 3:14 pm

Alek,

Apparently you have never clicked on the items in the blue menu bar at the top of every page. Just click on Quick Links. You will find this and several other "cool links".

Bob,

I don't see any cool links in "Quick Links". Do you have your personal options set to something special?

I also agree with you in your post to bpal, serp changes happen as Google finds links, etc. The Update is just "housekeeping" (I like that phrase).

Think of the update more as the punctuation at the end of a sentence.

Caryl

bpal

Apr 23rd 2004, 3:18 pm

bpal,

Didn't you ask the same question in message # 206 of this thread?

Good observation. :) Yeah, I think I did pretty much ask the same thing. I was just asking again to gain more of a response regarding the deep crawling aspect.

compar

Apr 23rd 2004, 3:22 pm

Bob,
I don't see any cool links in "Quick Links". Do you have your personal options set to something special?
Well if 'who's online' is a cool link as Alek suggests then the rest of the links might be considered cool also.

I guess I just think several of the drop down menu's in the forum, like UserPC and Quick Links are very user friendly and helpful-- and hence might be thought of as cool.

Maybe we Canadian's are just easily impressed.:cool:

hulkster

Apr 23rd 2004, 5:13 pm

Well if 'who's online' is a cool link as Alek suggests then the rest of the links might be considered cool also.

I guess I just think several of the drop down menu's in the forum, like UserPC and Quick Links are very user friendly and helpful-- and hence might be thought of as cool.

Maybe we Canadian's are just easily impressed.:cool:

I thought the fact that Shawn was picking up on the User Agent to classify that the Goolge Spider was "online" was pretty cool, plus the fact that there was like 5-6 Bots at the same time (and a Mediabot). Shawn has commented before that the number is often in the double digits, but it was neat to see it in person.

alek

compar

Apr 23rd 2004, 7:25 pm

hulkster

Apr 23rd 2004, 9:29 pm

Alek,

I don't want to belabor the point but it has been there to see all along. I've looked at the who's online 3 or 4 times and Google seem to always have at least one bot visiting and often more.

I was just surprised that you hadn't discovered this yourself. There is a lot of great stuff about this forum software. Everyone should experiment and check out all the features.

When you first enter the forums, it shows you who is online at the bottom of the page (and also when you view a specific threat). So I had noticed that, but beyond that, it wasn't really that interesting to me who was online at that (near) instant ... plus it's hard to be an expert in all of the ins/outs of the Forum Software, so maybe that's why I'm just a Grunt and you are a Raider?!? ;-)

I've seen you be a a bit "tough" on folks (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=383&page=1&pp=10), but everybody misses a few things here and there and I appreciate the feedback/information.

alek

P.S. I just confirmed that it looks like Shawn has the Bot's mapping to "Guest" in both of those displays I mentioned above - it's not big deal, but my guess is the "User Agent" classification isn't being done on those displays (?)

Foxy

Apr 24th 2004, 12:00 am

Just to finish it off

There's a bundle of straight google spiders down there right now at 8.00am our time - midnight yours

As well as Shawn - you burning that liquid oxygen again? :D

mcdar

Apr 24th 2004, 4:21 am

NEW PAGE UPDATE:
****Google PR/Backlink update currently is in progress!
NOTE: No Change in ANY data since yesterday's results
The "New Page" sleeping-bags.htm
04/07/2004 "New Page" went live

Search for "Sleeping Bags"
Position#n/a allinanchor:#n/a - 04/08/2004
position#104 allinanchor#32 - 04/09/2004
Postion#232 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/11/2004
Postion#193 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/12/2004
Postion#136 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/13/2004
Postion#133 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/14/2004
Postion#108 allinanchor:#n/a - 04/15/2004
Postion#104 allinanchor:#30 - 04/16/2004
Postion#92 allinanchor:#32 - 04/17/2004
Postion#29 allinanchor:#13 - 04/18/2004 [11 datacenters #30, 4 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#28 allinanchor:#13 - 04/19/2004 [ 5 datacenters #27, 2 datacenters #22]
Postion#29 allinanchor:#15 - 04/20/2004 [16 datacenters #25, 6 datacenters #27]
Postion#25 allinanchor:#7 - 04/21/2004 [All datacenters]
Postion#18 allinanchor: #7 - 04/22/2004 [10 datacenters #19]
Postion #19 allinanchor: #7 - 04/23/2004 [7 datacenters #21]
Postion #19 allinanchor: #7 - 04/24/2004 [7 datacenters #21]
_____________________________________________________
note: these pages are found using ( site:www.compar.com +sleeping Bags )
number of Bob's PR6 and PR5 links found:
19 - 4/13/2004
24 - 4/14/2004
40 - 4/15/2004 (most datacenters report 40 but some as low as 31)
37 - 4/16/2004 (7 datacenters report 36, 7 report 42, the rest - 37)
37 - 4/17/2004 (8 datacenters report 36, the rest - 37)
38 - 4/18/2004 (10 datacenters report 37, 16 report 32, the rest - 37)
48 - 4/19/2004 (7 datacenters report 47, the rest - 48)
50 - 4/20/2004 (9 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
50 - 4/21/2004 (7 datacenters report 49, the rest - 50)
51 - 4/22/2004 (12 datacenters report 48, 5 datacenters report 50, the rest - 51)
51 - 4/23/2004 (7 datacenters report 50, the rest - 51)
51 - 4/24/2004 (7 datacenters report 50, the rest - 51)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.komar.org +sleeping Bags )
Alek's PR 7 Link:
Not reported by Google 4/17/2004
Reported by Google 4/18/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/19/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/20/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/21/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/22/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/23/2004 (all datacenters)
Reported by Google 4/24/2004 (all datacenters)
__________________
note: this page is found using ( site:www.ski-france-ok.com +sleeping Bags )
Foxy's PR5 and two PR4s
0 - 4/20/2004
1 - 4/21/2004
1 - 4/22/2004
1 - 4/23/2004
1 - 4/24/2004
__________________
# of Links from my posts to this thead
69 4/17/2004 [Edited to remove 20 posts in this thread that did not have link]
75 - 4/18/2004
90 - 4/19/2004
93 - 4/20/2004
97 - 4/21/2004
104 - 4/22/2004
111 - 4/23/2004
117 - 4/24/2004
__________________
Caryl's Links [links posted 04/07/2004]
2 PR6s & 5 PR5's (no way of telling which are accounted for)
__________________
PR/Backlink info (so far) from the 64.233.161.xxx bank of datacenters

sleeping-bags.htm has PR5
49 Backlinks
(backlinks reported in the 49)
5 of Caryl's links
42 of Bob's Links
1 of Foxy's Links
2 for Digitalpoint forums
Nothing for Alek's link(?)

compar

Apr 24th 2004, 5:31 am

I've seen you be a a bit "tough" on folks (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=383&page=1&pp=10), but everybody misses a few things here and there and I appreciate the feedback/information.

alek

You know Alek it is a bit of a problem. I'm always ready and willing to offer what knowledge and opinions I have. Sometimes people really appreciate it. I could even find you a couple of links on this forum where they have said so. The problem arises when the information or opinion is not what they want to hear.

I'm the kind of guy who if I have spinach on my tooth I would want you to tell me. But there are many others who are offended or embarrassed if you offer this help to them.

So there are times when someone will tell me my attitude sucks or that I'm rude. I just have to try and balance those with the times that people say Wow! thanks for your help.