Google boulder river, then, please, comment on the results.

For me, numbers one, four, five, and ten are about an area near Darrington, WA. If you look at my location, you'll see why this fascinates me. The rest of the front page is about a river in Montana, a day's drive from here, that's popular with fishing.

I saw the term show up in my server logs, which surprised me. I would think most of the results would be about something - a park, hotel, store, etc - in Boulder, CO. And one of them would surely be wikipedia; none of the top ten were devoted to either. I'm not using the personalized search, in fact, I'm not even signed into any of the Google products with that browser, although I have my gmail open in Opera, and I've been the only node on this IP address for a few weeks.

Google moved from "show me what I typed" to "show me what I mean" a long time ago. I wonder if the same thing is happening, whether you want personalized results or not, in a shift from "show me pages relevant to what I typed" to "show me pages relevant to me; this is my mood?" So I'd love to see whether you Googlers get the same results...?

I honestly question whether Google's system is the best for relevant results. That's what everyone believes but some websites that show up simply hacked Google's system.

I just realized how I could do this so you could see the SERPs as I see them:

1) LocalHikes - Boulder River Trail <-- near Darrington, WA.

2) The Boulder River in Southern Montana : Fly Fishing Information ...

3) Pictures and Photographs of the Boulder River in Southern Montana ... <--- same as 2).

4) Boulder River Trail #734 - Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest <--- also near Darrington, WA.

5) Fishing the Boulder River, Sweet Grass County, Big Timber, Montana!

6) Hike of the Week: The wonders of water are plain to see on the ... <--- also Darrington.

7) Wilderness.net- Boulder River Wilderness <--- Washington, but it doesn't say where.

8) Boulder River (southwestern Montana) - Wikipedia, the free ...

9) Boulder River - Fishing Guide - Montana FWP

10) Boulder River Retreat - Boulder Junction Wisconsin - Snowmobiling ... <-- a retreat in Wisconsin.

Not sure if this helps you figure anything out or not, but I believe personalization is a factor as well...it's also mixed in with geotargeting, servers, and a bunch of other stuff.

Google has seem to ramped up on the local search results, I've notice a big change in the way Google is providing relevant search results. I think 2008 is going to be a big algorithmic changing year for Google. Considering the buyout attempt of Yahoo! by Microsoft Google might need to make some moves to provide more relevant results.

I tend to agree with you, but not for the reason you suggested, Stephen. I think Google will make some big changes, but they won't have anything to do with any buyout attempt (something I personally believe will lead nowhere anyway). They've been firing small warning shots (paid posts, text link ads, PageRank sellers, directories) and I see at least one of those four getting a heavy duty smackdown laid on them. My own hunch is directories, given the large number of phpLd installs and the relative ease in which these and similar scripts could be targeted.

The irony is that the less you care about what they're doing and the less you try to optimize for it, the better off you end up doing.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I tend to agree with you, but not for the reason you suggested, Stephen. I think Google will make some big changes, but they won't have anything to do with any buyout attempt (something I personally believe will lead nowhere anyway). They've been firing small warning shots (paid posts, text link ads, PageRank sellers, directories) and I see at least one of those four getting a heavy duty smackdown laid on them. My own hunch is directories, given the large number of phpLd installs and the relative ease in which these and similar scripts could be targeted.

The irony is that the less you care about what they're doing and the less you try to optimize for it, the better off you end up doing.

Very true, I'm actually tired of hearing people complain about the text link penalties being handed out to sellers. Any way you cut it text links were a way to manipluate Pagerank & search results since one could choose the anchor text of their choice.

I say just deserts to any whos revenue came from paid text links, those links help ruin the relevancy of some search terms for quite awhile.

+Talk for making a great point adam.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I just realized how I could do this so you could see the SERPs as I see them:

Yours are very similar to mine, but I've got a couple more from the state I'm querying from, which are floating to the top. That was more or less the case two months ago. I guess it's a bit of a long tail search, but I would think they'd have millions of pages to choose from that mention Boulder, as in Colorado. I'm fascinated that that doesn't come up, and it looks like they're geo-targeting to give me more links to Washington's Boulder River vs Montana's.