At the moment the non profit site I developed, www.worldcauseonline.org is at the top of google and yahoo with the phrase "World Cause" It has been in the top ten for a while fluctuating between positions (1 -6) Since its launch in late December 2007.

On google 1/49,000,000ish
On yahoo 1/968,000,000ish


Here is the interesting thing, the landing page of the site is a flash intro, by request of client. Also, there are no meta tags or any actual attempt to improve search engine ranking, other than having relevant content.

Also the website is based on drupal, and though the cms has a pathauto module to improve search engine friendliness, I did not implement it so my paths look like this "http://www.worldcauseonline.org/node/7" . I also don't have a site map.

Does this debunk all that has been written? Maybe a fluke, a rather happy fluke!


***Note, I'm not trying to disadvantage my client, I'm part of the organization. Once I saw the rankings I decided to hold off on those things just to see what would happen and 6 months latter....

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www.jovialdesigns.com

Originally Posted by j11t

Does this debunk all that has been written? Maybe a fluke, a rather happy fluke!

If I had to pick one, I'd say that comes closer to affirming than debunking the fact that meta tags have no influence whatsoever in ranking through any of the main search engines. Also, the term you're coming up for is the beginning of your page title, which, again, confirms rather than debunks, that a page title is one of the strongest on page ranking factors.

the 47,000,000 is for pages that have either of the words in any order.

there are only 766 pages that are actually chasing the term "World Cause"

so you mean the other alternative "cause world"

the 47,000,000 is for pages that have either of the words in any order.

there are only 766 pages that are actually chasing the term "World Cause"

I'm very new to this, so I'm merely asking a handful of potentially stupid questions, because I'm curious. So far all the sites I've done have been pretty small scale or for an esoteric audience so satisfying the clients wasn't difficult. However, I'm starting to grow and have become quite interested in SEO.

If what you said is true wouldn't "world cause" and "cause world" have the same number of approximate results but with a different ordering. However, I just did another search. This time for "world cause" 26,000,000 results, and "cause world" 203,0000.

Single word queries "world" and "cause" yielded even more results.
If what you said is correct, shouldn't the double phrase combination have more than the single word given that you said these searches also included "either of the words"

From a programming stand point the above assertion doesn't hold water since the query is now "world" AND "cause"

Not as the implication of your statement, which would be
(("world" AND "cause") or ("cause" AND "world") or ("cause") or ("world"))
With some kind of relevancy algorithm used to return the results in a logical order

I apologize if I have misconstrued your words or done a bit of extrapolation, just curious. Also, where did you get the 766 figure from?

All in all 1/766 ain't too Shabby Either.

the 766 comes from an allintitle: search which can give a better indication of how many pages are actively targeting the phrase.

I somewhat oversimplified the "how" SEs come up with the numbers, it's definitely not as simple as (this AND that) OR (this OR that) OR (this OR that) etc, but needless to say, don't take raw numbers ( ... of about x,000,000) as being an accurate value.

I see that ABOUT is definitely the keyword here...and seeing the fluctuation within a very short amount of time I can see it is not exactly a precise measurement. Still being new to this,at first glance I was shocked.

Why wouldn't the query be as simple as what is put in the search?
Find "String" , (this AND that) etc

I wasn't saying it was the query that determines the number of results, but rather the algorithm that is in play, which is obviously complex.

Input(simple) -> Complex algorithm returns list of possibilities.

Well now, since I'm quite intrigued. I'm going to delve into the world of SEO. This forum should be a helpful resource.

Thank you for the information you shared .

Originally Posted by j11t

From a programming stand point the above assertion doesn't hold water since the query is now "world" AND "cause"

Just to pick nits, that's boolean logic. Programming would mean, say, writing code to parse a boolean query, and then run that query. Orders of magnitude different.

Anyway, the reason you see the numbers fluctuate is because Google has many data centers. You're probably hitting different ones with each query.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Just to pick nits, that's boolean logic. Programming would mean, say, writing code to parse a boolean query, and then run that query. Orders of magnitude different.

Anyway, the reason you see the numbers fluctuate is because Google has many data centers. You're probably hitting different ones with each query.

Okay okay, we can all get nit picky. I thought what I as saying was apparent.

When I said from a "programming standpoint" , I was trying to put what I was saying in the context of an algorithm. Perhaps, I should have phrased my statements in a different way.


I was merely pointing out a simple part...the query


I do realize string1 && string2 || yaddyaddayaddd is boolean logic which is an integral part of programming....true false (do this or that) eventualy all back down to (1's and 0's) and eventually electric potentials for the cpu to sort out almost instantaneously....MAGICAL

On a different note.
The fluctuations seem pretty big. I did an allintitle:world cause search and got 1/68,100 on google. I tired several times and got a range between (20,000 to 72,000)considerably more than 766.

I was looking at the google help pages and what they have written confirms my observations

By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type vacation hawaii.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/st...ctx=basics#and

I had no idea about the data centers, this is actually quite interesting. Definitely going to try to learn more about SEO. I'll look around the forum.

Ignore the "get more links" posts and "how to get more PR" threads

Thanks for the heads up. Where would you recommend I look, and what are some good sources with quality non gimicky info?

Stick to stuff from (in no particular order)
Learning Newbie, vangogh, jamestl2, ForrestCroce, VirtuosiMedia, whym, willcodeforbeer and a few others .

Garbage info is a bit like p0rn, difficult to define but you'll recognize it when you see it.

Thank you