My site is now on first page of results ... for my username!

[bathrobe]

I have always figured that there is something weird at Google. But this one really takes the cake!

My username is bathrobe. I use this monicker at a number of places -- bulletin boards, Wikipedia, etc.

I now find that my site, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese languages (www.cjvlang.com), which does not mention 'bathrobe' at any place on the site, now comes up on the first page of results on a Google search for 'bathrobe'!

People may remember problems I've mentioned with Google before:

* The fact that page content in Chinese or Japanese is not even being indexed by Google, even though the site is filled with words in these languages. (It is particularly galling to be ignored on Chinese bird species names, because my site is virtually "authoritative" in this area, and yet other non-Chinese sites which list bird species in Chinese characters get listed in Google results!)

* My subsite on Hainan -- which some visitors told me was the best site about Hainan they had found on the Internet -- was stuck with poor rankings in results for over two years, way behind lots of inferior or useless sites. I shifted it to its own site (www.hainan-world.com) almost 7 months ago, and the redirect page at the old location, which at long last made it to the second page of results, still scores higher than the new site!

I accepted these 'injustices' as something that couldn't be helped, but things are getting patently ridiculous when people looking for bathrobes find a site about Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese!

There is something seriously wrong with Google's algorithm. There is so much junk, outdated stuff, etc. in their results, and they just can't seem to flush it out.

[just-trying-to-help]

Hi Bathrobe,

Actually, there's nothing odd about this at all. It is no secret that Google takes into consideration the incoming links to a site as popularity and the use of the anchor text as the topic of the site.

The reason is, you are leaving comments in blogs with your url and the anchor text as bathrobe, as in this post
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001873.php
There are obviously more blogs similar to this so Google thinks that because you have many different sites linking to you with the anchor text bathrobe, your site is about bathrobe.

If your anchor text(comment name) was "bird species", then you would be on the first page of Google for bird species.

Read more about anchor text http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/...imization.html

[incrediblehelp]

Well do you think it is because on various website that you may post at, your username might be hyperlinked to your various domain names?

For instance when I post on blogs, my username is hyperlinked to my domain, kbkmarketing.com. Here is an example at WPN:

http://videos.webpronews.com/2006/12...e-of-pagerank/

Of course kbkmarketing.com is going to rank for the keyword "jaan kanellis" if do enough posting.

[bathrobe]

Er... Ok, not so weird. Thanks for the tip.

If all else fails (mutual linking, etc.), it is clear that this is the best way to get rankings for a site.

[incrediblehelp]

Check out blog spamming at WikiPedia. That might explain it a little better than me.

[bathrobe]

I understand what people are saying about links, blog spam, etc. Point taken.

But I still find it amazing that incoming links will give first-page ranking to a site that doesn't contain the keyword anywhere on the site itself. In other words, content counts for zero! (Similarly for a site that has no content about Hainan other than a redirect to a site that does).

Maybe people have been doing SEO for too long when they start considering this kind of behaviour normal!

Anyway, this has been a valuable experience for me. I find it strange that Google expects webmasters to concentrate on developing content when their algorithm throws up nuggets like this. Why bother with content when SEO manipulation is so much more rewarding!

[Jenyfari]

It is amazing and when you think about it, it really shows a failing in how Google ranks web pages. I think most of us know the story about the keyword "click here". When you type that into Google the site that comes up first is Adobe and yet when you go into the Adobe site the phrase "click here" is nowhere to be found. The only reason it ranks first for that keyphrase is that thousands of other websites are linking to the Adobe site using those keywords.