This is my first post on this forum, so be kind!
I work for Norwich Union as a web developer for the [domain.co.uk] site amoung others. Over the past few months I have been reading the excellent articles over at searchenginewatch with the view to increase the ranking of our couk site.

I have been monitoring our position on hundreds of keywords on all the main search engines and have noticed something strange going on at google....

Last week [domain.com] (which is a website owned by the same company I work for, but run by another team) launched there new ["keyword phrase"] service.

I have been monitoring ["keyword phrase"] as a keyword for our couk site and have added the words to my title tag etc.

However searching [keyword phrase] on google shows [domain.com] on the second page of results, while [domain.co.uk] is nowhere... which is extremly weird - Not only is thier link popularity a lot lower than ours, but there site is in a frameset and there frameset does not have titles, meta tags or any no frames tag. Thus ["keyword phrase"], to a search engine, is not even mentioned on the page!!!

How can their site rank in the top 20, when they don't even have the keyword on the page???

The only thing I can assume is that they have bought the keyword from Google.

Incidently, searching [keyword phrase] on google.co.uk brings up [domain.co.uk] on the first page, while [domain.com] is nowhere to be seen. Also searching ["other keyword phrase, same root"] on google.com places couk higher than .com - so I assume they have only bought ["keyword phrase"] on google.com

Who would have thought that google would sell out - or does anyone else know why this is happening?

Cheers

[no sigs, please]

P.S I don't know anyone at .com - so I can't tell if they HAVE bought a keyword

[This message has been edited by Paul M (edited 05-31-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Eathan (edited 05-31-2001).]

Have you checked the cached version of the .com site on Google? Sometimes a phrase used in link text pointing to a page can boost ranking even when the phrase does not appear on the page.

Now, regarding my edits... There were a lot of them, and I'd like to avoid that in the future.

Your best bet is to stay pretty generic where possible. Refrain from posting your URLs, keywords, etc. where possible. After all, your question is not about fuzzy pink widgets, it's about a .com vs. a .co.uk on Google where one appears to be optimized for a phrase, and yet ranks lower than the other.

Hope I was clear, and once again, welcome.

There is not any one thing that determines ranking, it is an array of things. Looking at each singlar part is not going to tell you what you want to know.

I am not in the UK, but from what I gather co.uk sites get a boost in ranking for people searching form there. This is a logical thing to do for business, the odds are that the uk surfer wants a uk company.

(1) co.uk gets more hits than .com (.com is a new service), so its not to do with popularity and...
(2) co.uk is in the open directory and gets a good page rank (3rd in a category of 50+ sites), while .com is not in open directory

The only thing I can assume is that they give a boost to .coms - which is not on really when both .com and .co.uk, in this situation, are uk only...
Anyway, thanks for the advise

I would like to comment on the question of payment however. Number one, I agee that Google would be behaving illegally if they accepted payment for standard "on merit" listings.

They have in the last few weeks introduced two new services. AdWords which are the small pink/blue boxes that appear on the right in response to specified keywords and the even newer Sponsored Links that appear at the top of the page like the GoTo "featured sites" in AltaVista.

Type in "hotels in...." and then add the French, UK or USA capital city and you will see what I mean.

I have tried both services in the past 3 weeks and they compliment the standard "on merit" listings that I get for other keywords.

This is the Google approach to adding commercial elements to the site but they still keep it competitive because the AdWords Box has a meter and if the box below gets more clicks it rises to the top. Neat.
So the trick here is to write good copy for the box. Rather like creating a reader friendly, as opposed to SE friendly, Meta Title

The Sponsored Link in the green/yellow band at the top, however, has a min $10,000 spend.

Click through rates for the AdWords run at 2% to 4% per 1000 page impressions. Way below the standard top 10 listings so only for clients who demand instant visibility until optimised pages get spidered.

In which court? Law? Country?

Conduct unbecoming everyone's favorite search engine, but certainly not illegal.

I was picking up on Janet Berg's comment "It would be illegal for them to do so after publicly declaring they don't, and they play above board"

We both should perhaps have said - "unethical" or "less than honest"

My comments on their x2 paid listing services seem to indicate how they honestly express what is available for the people with cash

I have no suspicions that Google is doing anything illegal, or even “immoral”.

They state “Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search. “

The accusers only reason to believe that they do is because they can’ t think of anything else to explain a ranking.

If you are having a hard time accepting that this behavior would be illegal online. Think of a real world situation. You are operating a race. The three fastest runners all get metals. It is stated that to get the gold metal you have to finish first, without breaking any of the race rules, which would disqualify you. Now, somewhere under that table the gold metal is sold and the “winner” of the race not only did not run fastest, he didn’t have to run at all! Now, were all of the race participants defrauded or not?

This is essentially what Paul is stating. He did not win, therefore the only logical explanation (to him anyway) is that the actual winner must have bribed the judges.

Sorry to have brought it up, but then again, what is that old quote, "Believe something false long enough...etc etc"? Paraphrased badly of course....perhaps someone could help out with the original quote.

In any event, interesting thread. I'd like to see a ton more advertising on Google, in the same way I'd like to see Hotmail and Yahoo charge for email. Why? It makes it better for everyone involved in internet business. Just look at what Goto's decision did for all the second tier PPC search engines.

In my humble opinion, borne out by Yahoo's decision a few months ago to start charging for certain services, we will see more and more of this as economic reality takes hold.

Hopefully a micropayment for Jim's newsletter will be soon at hand. Then we'll know the day has arrived. ;-)

Links to the other site may not be as good by coming from less authoritive sources or by not containing the appropriate keyword. This would explain why they don't do as well for other phrases.