Article about penalizing for exact-phrase match? Options

[Regent]

I've heard that there is an article about Google starting to penalize for exact phrase matches in the title and/or in incoming link text. Does anyone know where I can see this article?

Thanks.

[alexasigno]

Hmm that would seem a bit silly on googles behalf. Wouldnt have thought that to be the case, but interesting if true

[Mike521]

that was reported in the latest search engine news article from searchengine-news.com

apparently it was something along the lines of, if you have the exact same phrase in your incoming link text, your title, and your body, then there is apparently a slight penalization. This is against pages that are "too" optimized..

damned if you do, damned if you don't, huh?

[DianeV]

I have on occasion suspected that there may be penalization (not talking about just Google here) for too-perfect optimization. I have no proof, though.

[bwelford]

This would defy all logic and would make the term "relevancy" that all the Search Engines aim to deliver completely nonsensical.

Unfortunately searchengine-news.com only allows paid-up subscribers to see their articles, as far as I could tell. Well, not to worry, if the article is not nonsense, then presumably we will see the ideas in it survive and they will eventually get into the public domain.

[Mike521]

you're right, that article, and most of their content for that matter, are available only to subscribers

my company subscribes but I think its illegal for me to post it here.. sorry

[Gede]

Think.

SEO's would very soon learn the trick of near perfect optimisation.

Then what ?

Nonsens

[chris]

SEO's would very soon learn the trick of near perfect optimisation.  

True. Think a step further....

Currently poor SEOs suddenly become good SEOs and currently good SEOs will soon learn to become poor SEOs/Good SEOs now.

'twouldn't be a good move at all.

[CelesteK]

The people at Google must have some very strong philosophical brains to be able to justify that. How do you convince yourself and others that keywords-which are the thing I assume relevancy relates to in keyword searches-must be in a specific proportions and not too relevant?
I also find this nonsense. If I have a site with free world maps what else would I have links, title and body text say? If someone really did write that article I would check on their credentials to say such a thing.
Google can justify some penalties, but I don't believe keywords in relevant places.

[cre8pc]

Chris, I can hardly concentrate because your new tagline and site are cracking me up!

Kim

[bragadocchio]

...your new tagline and site are cracking me up!

Ditto! Good stuff.

It would be interesting to see this article. I'll look around. If anyone finds it, please post a link. Thanks.

[wanderer]

penalize for exact phrase matches in the title and/or in incoming link text

That would make absolutely no sense. None. It would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are billions of pages on the web. Probably a good 80% of those are not "optimized", never have been and never will be. Doesn't mean though that millions of those pages don't use keyword phrases in their titles and incoming links. How else does Joes or Jane webmaster bring relevant traffic to their website? Are they going to ask for links that say "Joe's website" or links that say "Jane's Fantastic Antipasto"?

For instance, let's say there is an e-com site out there selling a new twist on roller blades - a detachable chassis that transforms the roller blade into a shoe you can walk around in - or better yet an ice skate (there is one btw http://www.hypno.it/). So, this site has unasked for, incoming links with the phrase "detachable roller blade chassis" popping up all over the web. The phrase is in it's title. No optimization involved at all. Is Google going to penalize the site because it's too optimized. I just can't see it. :?

[digitalpoint]

I don't think it's as "bunk" as everyone seems to think. From my own observations, it does appear that's what happening to some extent.

From my observations, the overall relevancy seems to be somewhat better. My own pages that I'm unquestionably one of the most relevant pages on the net went up a few slots ("isp billing software", "keyword tracker", "keyword ranking", "radius software", etc.). On the flip side, pages that were "overly" optimized to gain positioning based on optimization instead of relevancy, ("oracle consulting", "filemaker consulting", "icverify", etc.) sank like a stone down the ranks. I'm not too bummed about it because I know I wasn't the most relevant.

So from first glance, it does appear that somehow Google is seeing sites that are over optimized and giving them the positioning they actually deserved based on relevancy. *HOW* they are able to pull that off, I have no clue... But it does seem they were successful at it (at least based on my ranking changes from a week ago).

Everyone of course has some sort of bias towards their own sites, but try to step back and look at the big picture. Google isn't broken and Google doesn't "hate" you. For everyone moving down, there are just as many people moving up. And if you forget about your site for a moment and look at your search results as a Google user, are the sites being returned above yours generally (there will of course be exceptions... it's a machine for God's sake) more relevant?

I've said it before, but I'll say it again... Google is trying to return the most relevant results, *not* the most optimized.

- Shawn

[wanderer]

somehow Google is seeing sites that are over optimized and giving them the positioning they actually deserved based on relevancy

Now that does make sense. Penalizing or filtering sites that have a lower optimized : relevancy ratio would definitely be the thing to do.

Google is trying to return the most relevant results, *not* the most optimized.

True. But one would think that they wouldn't want to institute an algorithmic change that would also filter the most releavant when it is also the most optimized, which is what some of the responses to the original post seemed to imply.

[peter_d]

Agreed Shawn.

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"Optimised" and "relevant" are not necessarily the same thing. SEOs tend to interchange those terms because it serves their purposes.

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In reality, Google's algo and Google's users determine relevancy. The fact that a page matches a keyword query string does not necessarily make it relevant. It might be, or it might simply be a page that repeats the keyword term a lot.

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I don't know if Google is placing a penalty on keyword stuffing, but if they are, it's certainly not before time.

[digitalpoint]

True. But one would think that they wouldn't want to institute an algorithmic change that would also filter the most releavant when it is also the most optimized, which is what some of the responses to the original post seemed to imply.

Agreed... but also in a perfect world they would be able to hit everything exactly right... there would be no spam at all.

So if they improve the results by tweaking the algorithm to give less weight to "perfectly" optimized sites, it might make your topic a little less relevant if it has to do with Search Engine Optimization... But for every other topic, it would be a good tweak. Google isn't looking for "perfect" (that's an impossibility), they are looking for "least bad".

Most of the time people are optimizing their site because they want to gain ranks artificially, not because they are actually worried that the search engine has an easy time with spidering.

I'm trying to look at it from a normal, everyday Joe's perspective and for me, whatever reason on *average* it's looking like better/more relevant results. Of course you are going to have a small percentage that is on the wrong end... some relevant stuff down the ranks, and some irrelevant stuff up the ranks. But it's only a machine, and as long as the majority are more relevant than irrelevant, then the search results were successful.

- Shawn

[NorthStar]

Penalizing for exact phrase match in a title tag or in content seems to be about the last thing you would want to add to your algorithm if you were hoping to improve relevancy. Unless they have moved on to some really impressive artificial intelligence algo, then it would be nearly impossible to remove exact phrase matches and improve quality.

This recent change in rankings has not affected all searches. So I can see why some posters might think that the current results appear relevant if there searches fall in these "unchanged" categories. For some of the sites I work on this is the case. The top 20 rankings appear relevent. However, for other sites the rankings have changed radically and the quality/relevancy is low.

I noticed that things started to change back to "normal" on Google Cananda yesterday for some searches that had been seeing radically changed results for the past few days. My guess is that the rest of Google will also follow and that sites with good content, good title tags, smart site architecture, good link popularity, etc will regain their relevancy and rankings.

This whole episode makes it evident how hard it must be to make a really good search algorithm. Good luck MSN.

[Mike521]

I'm sure we should all wait a bit before making massive changes to our link structures. The article could be right, it could be wrong. I think it's too early to make any changes based on it though. and if your sites continue to do well regardless, then thats good too

[digitalpoint]

This whole episode makes it evident how hard it must be to make a really good search algorithm. Good luck MSN.

What defines a good algorithm? When you break it down, the perfect algorithm would be one that you could not optimize for to artificially gain ranks...

- Shawn

[CelesteK]

I am curious as to what you mean by "artificially optimize".