Holy cow! Google <3's me!

[thistlechaser]

(Yes, I know this is my third post in one night. Cope! :) )

Google has either gone insane or it loves me. When one searches for 'harry potter fanfic', my recs page comes up as the third result (of 23,500)! Not the third page of results, the third result on the first page. I'm pretty sure Google adds weight to rankings for the age of a page, and my page is not old at all, so this is really odd... I think I recall hearing that they add weight for frequent updates? If so, that might be where some of it is coming from, but still... the third result? Man! That rocks!

When you do a search for 'harry potter slash fanfic' I'm result number 18 (of 3,710). Doing a search for 'harry potter slash', I'm in the top 75 (of 25,300).

Gods, for 'harry potter fanfic recommendations' I'm number one (of 691) and for 'harry potter fanfic recs' I'm number one (of 669).

(For those who don't know, I used to work for a search engine and I've worked in webpage optimization (trying to get your site to rank higher with search engines), so I'm more interested in this than other people might be.)

Comments

I'm like #1 for t68 downloads or some such

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

It is very odd how sensitive Google can be to the input. E.g. "t68 download" might not even find me but "t68 downloads" puts me at one.

Google seems to actually prefer NEW links.

I love the new slide show feature being tested right now, it is tres cool. (shows your results as a slide show)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Somewhere I read that Google takes into accounts the number of referring pages -- how many pages link to that site.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You're right, but as far as I know, I have very few links leading to that page. The LJ wereadshite group and one non-LJ page. ...checking Google (they have a tool that lets you see who links to what page) they have only one link listed to it. Very odd.

[frances-jane.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I have a possible answer. From reading this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,634552,00.html) and this one too (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,959151,00.html) it seems like your LJ is responsible for the google-popularity of your rec site. I don't think it necessarily matters about the lack of linkage; rather that the same people read both. If you stick 'thistle chaser' into google it'll come up with loads of your stuff.

But my reasoning here is faulty, owing to the rather sad fact that I don't know what I'm talking about. Well done on being #3, however!

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

Older is definitely not better. I've had a web page up on Geocities for eons. A search for 'World of Darkness MUSH' lists it as 13th, and not even by itself, but as a subset of someone else's page. And, it is linked from several big World of Darkness locations.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hm. Interesting...