A Google News story ranks above my website and is completely irrelevant to the search query. The term does appear in the article, but not in the Title. Does Google really care about relevant results, or just funneling traffic back to themselves?
Their search engine, their news story. In a funny way it makes sense. That's life.....with Google. But I think in compensation they should link their article to your site.
Can you show us example of the search query. Thats the only way to comment, since i dont like to comment prematurely and say whos right or wrong.
the google news listings are obvious that it's google news with the icons. I wouldn't worry to much about it here is an example for those asking http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS239US239
Don't really want to reveal the search query TBH. I am not just having a bias because it's my website ranking below it...
sorry but in that case, we can't comment. You need to tell us more about this. Is the news related to you? Is the news first posted by you? Is the news site ranking higher , a authority site? Check whos having more backlinks for that particular page not site. Check allinanchor:"yoursearchquery" - Whos ranking higher you or that site answer these questions and maybe you will get your answer.
Was just posting an example of the google news listing I didn't figure you wanted to post the actual term
Aha, thats a part of their new universal search algorithm. Its pretty natural that News, Blogs, Pictures comes up as first result. I was outranking large sites such as Reuters, CNN, BBC when sunrocket went bust coz my blog entry was right on Top for about 3-4 days
Is the news related to you? What do you mean? I didn't write the article, No. Is the news first posted by you? No Is the news site ranking higher , a authority site? Yes Check whos having more backlinks for that particular page not site. The article has no backlinks. The story was only posted a few hours ago. Check allinanchor:"yoursearchquery" - I rank #3 for allinanchor for the term. Again article is new so obviously doesn't rank. The term appears twice in the news article which is why it's ranking.
It is pretty common , when I search for free programming interview question etc amazon occupies first few spots.
I think you self-answered your question about why that site is outranking you. Authority sites have more weightage. Again that article is not yours, so why are you expecting it rank higher? I thought its your article appearing on that site and ranking higher. Let me give you another example: If you write a article on any topic and add it to digg (authority site) Make another mistake by using the same title or using keywords in body of Digg submission. Digg story will outrank you. However once your story is buried, your story would start to rank higher than Digg. Makes sense?
I know authority means a lot in determining google rankings, however the term is not used in the page title or url, it's only used twice in the actual content. I would hardly call that targeting the term.
Get a couple of backlinks to your page. It should outrank that site in 1-2 days. One more tip: Try to internally link your pages. This helps in getting the initial push when the keywords is new and not targetted by others.