Invisible on Google, but not Yahoo - please help

[curious george]

Hi. I am new here and just wanted to say that this forum is truly a great source of information. I apologize in advance for the lenght of my post, but I just had a few questions about my site's rankings.

1) I am getting decent rankings at Yahoo - somewhere in the 20's and 30's for my target keywords, but on Google my site is non-existant (or it falls in the 200-300 range) although my homepage has a PR(5) and sub=pages PR(4). Is there anything I should be doing to help my Google rankings? What could be causing the problem with getting listed higher in Google (keywords, links, ect.)? Is the age of teh site a serious issue?

One thought I has was from an article I read about Google penalizing sites with incoming text links that matched the text in their titles and body text. All my incoming text links use the anchor text of my site's domain name, which is both in my title tag and body text. Is this really a problem?

2) Will getting listed in the Yahoo directory help the situation? Is it a good idea to get listed in paid inclusion directories to enhance rankings generally? If so, what other directories should I be looking at besides Inktomi (and the free DMOZ)?

Thanks very much,
-CG

ps - It appears the the Keyword Density tool on the SEOGUY page is not working properly.

[Pyrrhonist]

Hmm... thanks for the information about the tool not working. I'm going to take a look at it this afternoon. Most likely the problem has arose when we switched frames to the new site. Sorry for any inconvenience

[Pyrrhonist]

Is your site on a new domain? New domains have been having issues lately with pages not showing up in the SERPS for a period of time. This is being called the sandbox effect. There is a way you can get around the sandbox effect though, just so you can see where your site would potentially rank. You can see where you SHOULD be (if the theories are correct) by entering your keywords as per usual, and then putting 7 -whatever in the search box. eg... if i searched for seo tutorial, it would look like this:

seo tutorial -basdrad -asdfasdgasd -asdgasga -adsfagasdf -asdfagdda -adfagasdf -adfasdas
What this does is search for pages that rank for seo tutorial, but don't include any of the gibberish i put after. We've been finding that that's a pretty good workaround lately. For a ton more information on the sandbox effect, SEO Guy's been writing about it in the thread here
http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=326

And rustybrick talks about it at seochat here
http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?p=70204#post70204

[seo guy]

PS the spider is fixed :)

George what is your domain?

[curious george]

Thanks SEO Bob for the insight into the sandbox effect. Unfortunately, I tried my search with the 7 negative arbitrary terms and the results were exactly the same. I was still buried in the 200-300 range. Any other ideas of why such a big difference between Yahoo and Google?

Does Google put more weight on linking? Do you have any advice about getting listed in those paid-inclusion directories?

Thanks again,
-CG

[Pyrrhonist]

hey george,

What's your domain?

[curious george]

http://www.primesportspicks.com

Thanks Bob.

[Zapcat]

:D :D :D I 'think' I'm now a happy person!! Just put the search term 'play bingo online -basdrad -asdfasdgasd -asdgasga -adsfagasdf -asdfagdda -adfagasdf -adfasdas' in Google, and I'm number 1 :eek:
Am I reading this sandbox thing right in that i should soon be high up for this term (I'm number 60 odd atm)?

Thanks
Penny

[Zapcat]

Sorry to butt in on your post George :o I was just too excited!

Penny

[Pyrrhonist]

Congratulations Zapcat! those are the kind of rankings we like to see

[Kevin 11]

Hope this sandbox theory is correct. When I search with the jibberish after my search phrase I'm showing a couple of #1's and some more top 20's for sites that are nowhere to be found also!

[Pyrrhonist]

Everything that i've seen is showing that the sandbox effect is correct. I'm just glad that someone's found a loophole so we can find out real rankings.

[Kevin 11]

Okay, I have an odd scenario. my friend has a site thats over 1 year old.

When you do a search with the jibberish search string and plug in "real online slots" it shows it as #1 and #2. But, it is nowhere to be found in Google.

Any idea what's going on with this?

[Pyrrhonist]

I think the sandbox effect is actually more relevent to backlinks than the domain name. So if your friend has been aquiring backlinks more aggressively lately - in the past couple of months - then that would put it in a sandbox.

Does this match your friend's site?

[Kevin 11]

I think most of the backlinks were in place at the early stages, so the sandbox thing probably doesnt apply here.

He seems to think that for some reason a bunch of his sites have tripped some sort of filter or something. This guy gets great Yahoo results for good competitive keywords but is invisible Google.

So what does it all mean? The sites are looking good under the jibberish search but havent moved in a long time.

[Pyrrhonist]

Hey Kevin, is this a "friend"'s site, or really a friend's site :D

[Pyrrhonist]

Hmm... i don't know how to answer you, if the site's been established for a while. I think you might have to ask seo guy. After all, I am just his padawan.

[seo guy]

My theory (Although I havent seen the site) is that the jibberish deally removes "all" filters not just the sandbox and so its where the algorithm would rank you if you had no filters applied. So it is quite possible that your "friend" has done something else wrong in order to set off a different filter

[Kevin 11]

SEO Bob said - "Hey Kevin, is this a "friend"'s site, or really a friend's site"

It really is a "friends" site... we have been going nuts talking seo and trying to figure out why he does so well on Yahoo and is so "invisible" on Google.

SEO Guy - Thanks for clarifying the role of the jibberish search string in stripping off any potential filters. Still very confused on whats going on with the site. Can't see anything to obvious on it. The sites that do well in Google for similiar keywords look to me like they should be tripping more filters than "my friends".

I'm gonna create a duplicate page with the exact code on one of my "google friendly" domains and see if I can get it ranked. At least this might eliminate any potential "blacklist" notions.

[curious george]

Are back links the most important element at Google? I think they stress that point in their Guidleines.

THanks
-CG

[Zapcat]

So what is the best way to decide (if you're showing at no.1 for the jibberish search), whether you're in the sandbox or other filters have been applied? After my extreme excitement yesterday...I'm starting to feel that maybe I've over optimized my keyword instead and been filtered out :(

[SPARKO]

This sandbox effect is doing my nut dont fret though, I think a nice cold beer is in order I'm number one or on the first page for all terms when I use that filtered search, perhaps I'll get too much business :-) Google at the moment is destined to keep me at 479. Whatever I do 479 seems to be my niche for my searchwords. IN some ways I think I'd be better off buying a banned domain I'm sure I would of got a number 1 a lot quicker. I wish they'd have a limit on it though, I mean say for example 30 llinks. The algo should be able to tell who is buying 1000s of domains and who isn't. I mean if the site is 10 days old and has 300 links for example then sure be suspicious but 10 I think Is fine.

Zapcat :eek: dont start scaring me now with being filtered out...That is a freaky prospect. How long have you been playing in the sand, I wanna know how long this stuff takes.

[Zapcat]

I'm doing a good job scaring myself :) My site's been up a couple of months but it's only really the last month I've been heavily seoing and link grabbing, with my key phrase featuring majorly in the link titles.

[SPARKO]

Thats a similar scenario to me, I ranked better with a 0 bar, whats annoying me is should I go on another links binge or should I just chill for a while...

[vord]

Invisible on Google, but not Yahoo - please help

Curious vord wonders what the fuss is about. You seem to be number 1 in Google for the keyphrase you are developing - "prime sports picks".

The text in inbound links to your site is pretty important. Google ranks you for what that text says. Try to get some more links with "sports handicapping" and "npa picks". That would boost those phrases a bit. Unrelated text might get you to the top 30s for other phrases because of your PR5, but direct links with the right keywords directed at pages with a very specific title will help much more.

This would kind of make sense as Yahoo seems less fussy about inbounds and more particular about on page stuff.

Oops - missed the 1|2|3 page thing at the bottom. You guys will have no idea what I'm takling about by now.

:cool:

[jocelyn]

[edit reason] I started well but ended up mashing it... sorry... LOL [/edit]

[curious george]

Thanks Vord. Your advice makes much sense. My problem, and the reason for this topic initially, is that I am invisible for the phrase "sports picks" (although I may be number 1 for 'prime sports picks'). I am beginning to alter my anchor text for backlinks using these other key phrases.

Thanks again.
-CG

[vaix]

[QUOTE=SEO Bob]You can see where you SHOULD be (if the theories are correct) by entering your keywords as per usual, and then putting 7 -whatever in the search box. eg... if i searched for seo tutorial, it would look like this:

seo tutorial -basdrad -asdfasdgasd -asdgasga -adsfagasdf -asdfagdda -adfagasdf -adfasdas[/QUOTE]

I too tried that, and discovered, that my page is on the third SERP. But my site is not so new. It's at least 6 months old(I think it's even older). But the current keywords I chose recently (About 2-3 months ago). Can the sandbox effect affect that also, if there is such a thing? Or what's my problem???

thx...

Vaix