Google has introduced a filter:
"Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered."
http://searchenginejournal.blogspot....33768963966352
The filter is targeting highly competitive (commercial) keywords and phrases.
Any site that is doing well for such phrases loses the ranking benefit of the following:
- text of internal links containing those keywords
- text of reciprocal links containing those keywords
- those keywords in the URL
and possibly (I haven't seen any proof):
- keywords in the title
- keywords in H1 tags
- high density of the keywords on the page
- text of non-reciprocal links containing those keywords
Typically the page most affected is the home page. Often this is due to linking internally to it with keywords, rather than the traditional "home".
PageRank remains unaffected. Rankings for keywords and phrases not affected by the filter remain the same.
The unfiltered results can be seen by adding -mt-tb.cgi to the search query. This was first mentioned at the Register, prior to the recent update:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/33448.html
Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered. Some webmasters saw their sites drop from top listings to not being in the top 1,000 sites. Unlike other filters, this spam peanalty does not affect a page or sites overall perceived value. The end effect is lowered rankings for various specific searches for that page.
If you have a couple commonly paired words on your website such as "search" and "marketing", the new filter will check to see how the words are placed on your page (and possibly in incoming links). The new algorithm is looking for more naturally existing context to prevent search engine optimized websites from dominating search results. Essentially the goal of this filter is to get webmasters to adjust their content to be written for the users and not search engines. The problem with this logic is that good SEO typically falls in line with good site and page structure.
The filter is selective in that it is only enabled for some terms on certain searches. The filter can be overridden by placing a - character for the terms. If you search for search marketing you will find Commision Junction where my site was once listed. If you search for search-marketing you will see my site. If you search for search marketing info, you will see that the filter in not enabled for that search.
Off the start the filter was set rather corse, but it appears to be shifting more in line with reality. Some of the decent optimized sites are appearing back in the place where spam was just filling the results. Just this morning I saw a clients website pop up for two seperate phrases he was tripped for.
This filter marks the first time in search engine history where webmasters have not been able to reengineer exactly what the search engine did. Currently I do not recommend making any chages while Google is still fine tuning the filter.
by Aaron Wall @ Search Engine Marketing Info
If anyone can figure out a way around this dilemma, please advise asap.
Thanks a bunch!
