22 replies to this topic

[bwelford]

Sorry folks, I used up some airtime but did end up wiser! qwerty, I did reinstall but that wasn't the problem. I was clicking on a SERP reference to open the web page and then going to the cached version. Normally once the highlighting button is activated then all web pages visited will show the highlighted keywords. However if you do what I did, although the Google cached page header would make you think highlighting is being done, this is not correct.

However if in the SERP report, you click on the Cached copy, then you do see the highlighting as you described, qwerty.

And I have seen instances where there is no highlighting on the page, so the header shows the following:

These terms only appear in links pointing to this page:keyword, keyword

So keywords don't need to appear on the page to get high rankings. However that is the tough way to get high rankings!

Barry Welford

[TheGreatDane]

Hi Gents,
Barry, thanks for your input as well. Even though I got lost some way down the line in the cache-talk, I understand, that you as well have experienced, that high quality backlinks, can sort of "override" a well optimized site....pity, pity, that

You certainly are right, Barry, that this is a tough way to do SEO of your site!

[idrive]

I have another thought here...how long has the competitor been in first place and how long have you been in second place (Great Dane)? Perhaps at the end of the month or after a few months even you might overtake this competitor?

The SERP is not static in my opinion. When I first submit a site that has been optimized, it bounces in and out and up and down the results...until it settles in after 1.5 months or so. I have been through this numerous times.

Another thought...do you think that Google might pay tribute to sites that have leaner code? I am not thinking of these two particular sites - just in general.

[TheGreatDane]

Hi idrive
my site started off in position 1 for about 4 weeks ago. Two weeks later, I moved to position 2, when my competitor arrived.

I don't think, that the complexity of the code would meen any difference for the search engines (crawlers). After all it is very simple to strip all HTML-tags for instance using PHP - ending up with pure text.

I was a little worried though, if the use of PHP instead of pure HTML would meen any difference - because of the possibility to show dynamic content. But I have not experienced any downside in that respect (which is good as I'm using PHP very much ).

[keli]

The cached page is the one Google has actually crawled. This cached page content is what Google uses to judge a page to see if it is a relevant match for the search query.


http://www.google.co...res.html#cached

[bwelford]

The cached page is the one Google has actually crawled.

That's true partially. Unfortunately my own belief is that the cached page may not be the current version that is being used in evaluating the Google search algorithm.

From time to time the cached page may suddenly be one from a month back when the previous day the cached page was showing one only days old. So Google's cached page is one of the pages they spidered presumably recently but may not be the latest one they have spidered.

If the content is not changing much from time to time, this may not matter. If you would really be affected by whether it is the latest version they spidered, then you may have more of a problem.

Barry Welford

[keli]

From time to time the cached page may suddenly be one from a month back when the previous day the cached page was showing one only days old.

Have you noticed this over the last few months or has this always been your observation?

[bwelford]

I have only been aware of it over the last few months. The cached copy again seems to be correct very recently. The problem is that I don't know which behaviour is the norm. Unfortunately Google doesn't reveal what exactly is happening.

Barry Welford