Google Oddity – Ignoring a Keyword?
Wow, I haven't blogged much lately have I? Must be the Christmas season.
I'm a little disappointed that Google hasn't done a better job indexing the recipes.stevex.net site. I actually got into the habit of adding "stevex" to searches when I search for recipes. For example, Googling for baked french fries stevex. But look at the results for that search:
That first result doesn't have the word 'stevex' anywhere on the page. Why is that at the top of the results? I've seen Google do this for other queries as well, and I don't like it. If I've added a word to my search string, it's because I want pages that contain it.
But another problem is that the two results it did find on my site are old, old links to pages you haven't been able to get to through any links on the site for months. When I first put the site up, I didn't have a search engine, so I included some lame static links to all the pages to help the search engines find them. I've removed them, but they're still what Google prefers to find.
And, most importantly, Google didn't find the best result for that search: An actual recipe for baked french fries.
One of my goals over the Christmas break is to check in with Google's Webmaster Tools and see if there isn't some way I can help them do a better job with my site.
(Yahoo doesn't do much better, Windows Live Search doesn't either, though neither of them skips a keyword).