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The most common reason for this type of difference in rankings is that you are using personalized search; that Google is personalizing you search based on your prior search history, any information if you are logged in, etc. I usually go to Safari to the edit -> reset Safari option which resets Safari to like it was just freshly installed with no cookies, no browsing history, no cache, etc. and check my rankings that way.
I'm looking at their Our Method page at http://www.quickseoresults.com/our-method.php. It looks like their method focuses exclusively on link building. They brag about how many PR6-9 sites they get your links on, but this is an interesting paragraph they add:
If you are familiar with even basic SEO, you would know that it is useless to get links from a page with hundreds of outbound links but it’s not useless to get low value or no-follow links because they help construct an organic looking link profile. In the eyes of Google - less manufactured + less commercial = better rankings.
Their services include: wordpress blog posts, social profiles, forum links, web 2.0 blog posts (and this differs from wordpress blog posts how??), blog comments, bookmarking, monthly reporting, and SEO tips for your site.
Their facebook page has over 31,000 likes. The administrator of the facebook page asked for people to respond to a question recently, and in the comments said "So there are still real humans here :D" which doesn't lend confidence to me that all of those likes are very natural.
Everything sounds good, save for the Build My Rank portion. On their How It Works section of their site (http://www.buildmyrank.com/how-it-works) it says "We publish your article randomly on 1 of our high page rank, aged domains. You control how many articles are published daily for each of your domains." They only require 150 words for articles, so it seems you're looking at a ten sites with collections of random short articles.
Also check out this help desk article on reasons why the crawler gets stuck at one page on a campaign. http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/409821-why-isn-t-my-site-being-crawled-you-only-crawled-one-page
You do often see that if the engine knows about the URL but isn't able to crawl the page. It should eventually drop out. If you have control of the site you can also go into GWT and request removal of that URL from the index, since it's already returning a 404.
This is probably one to email to the help desk staff at help@seomoz.org and ask them directly. So sorry you're seeing problems!
I didn't get into anything moral about it. I'm going from Google's eyes -- if I am the search engine and I have xx sites with the same content to display, is there a reason I should display this site above any of those other xx identical sites? And is there a site out there that is better than those xx number of identical sites that offers more information? Google's out to make money too. If they don't satisfy their users with their results, their users will go elsewhere.
To go specifically to your home page question, do you know what is putting the hop parameter in there? That's likely not helping things.
I'm looking at Open Site Explorer, and this doesn't appear to be too strong of a site. It has 55 total links, from only 10 domains. The top link is from "Free For All Link Page", and there are several link pages (rather than editorial content) in your inlinks. These aren't sending the highest quality signals to your site, either.
I'm still waiting on OSE to download the whole list to see if they are on there. First, be sure that you're looking at links that go to your entire root domain and not just to the home page. Second, not all of those are the best sites. The Wedding planning directory has hundreds of links, including links to adult incontinence products. That's not the top 25% of the web that OSE aims to index.
On a side note, are you aware of all of the pages on your site and spammy comments?
http://astrobrite.net/blog/?attachment_id=16&cpage=2#comment-51834
http://www.astrobrite.net/partners.html
http://www.astrobrite.net/Gotlinks.php
http://www.astrobrite.net/lose_weight_fast.html
There's a fair amount of cleanup you can do to your site that would probably help a lot. Right now, it gives off a bit of a spammy taste. Your URLs are keyword stuffed (astrobrite.net/Arlington_Virginia_Carpet_Cleaning_Arlington_VA_Carpet_Cleaners.html) and you've got a lot of spammy incoming links with pharma anchor text from forums. You've got nearly identical pages for different cities that are likely going to be filtered as duplicate content. The about us page has images that are very large, making for a slow load time.
You may be aware of some of these already, and I know they're not what you came for, but I did want to point them out just in case you had someone build your site for you and you didn't realize what was going on.
I was just about to reply with check your analytics tools. I had the same issue happen on a WP site, and it was because I had two copies of GA running. Glad you figured it out, but so sorry that wasn't your true bounce rate!
You might find it valuable to read the recent SEOmoz post about link directory best practices at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices. It talks a lot about good directories, then links to the recently updated list of directories that SEOmoz has compiled.
I agree as well. Right now you can't hand off the analytics account if you and the client split ways, for one. For another, it's not just Google that can see which sites are related. Take a look at http://spyonweb.com/ -- put one of your clients in there, and you're likely to see all of your clients show up.
Google is known for changing the titles in its SERPs as well.
Hi Aran,
Some of the links are gone from this latest crawl, more will be gone in November, and they should be almost all gone by December. See Rand's post at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/november-2011-linkscape-update.
As I noted in the September index update, we have had some serious issues when crawling deeper on large domains and encountering binary files that contain code our crawler recognizes and treats as a link. To help stop this problem, we applied a black list to this index to stop a large number of the files folks had reported to us (our estimate is that ~40% of binary files are now removed). However, we know there's still more than a few of these in the database of links so we'll continue cranking away on solutions to remove them all. Our hope is to have them reduced in the next index (November) and nearly eliminated by the December index. If you're ever curious about the next/previous updates, you can always see data for them on our Linkscape calendar.
It does look like a broad vs exact match issue in numbers.
Here's information about OSE's latest update, form Rand's blog post. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/november-2011-linkscape-update
Are you seeing the links or are they still missing? If they're still missing, do contact help@seomoz.org.
There are a bunch of other affiliate sites out there that have the same copy for the home page. Take a random sentence from your home page and put it in a search engine and you'll see what I mean. That's one issue.
Another is that you seem to have some parameters indexed. In Google, I searched [site:officialunclaimedfunds.com "uncle sam" and www.officialunclaimedfunds.com/?hop=jokes&&What was indexed.
IMHO, this is just another thin affiliate site. In my few minutes of looking, there's nothing here that you can't find on a large number of other clickbank affiliate sites all selling me the exact same thing. The only advantage I see is that there aren't the ton of ads that I see on some of the other sites. Put another way, is there a reason why this page SHOULD be ranked?
Also, is this the same site you brought up in other posts, or is it a different site?
Have you taken a look to make sure that there's not a noindex tag on the home page, or that it's blocked in robots.txt? Is your home page in Yahoo or Bing? If you search the title tag text to see if that shows up? Does your home page return a 404 in the server header?
It's a bit harder to figure out without knowing your URL, but my first thought is to see if it's something technical where Google is behaving like it should, or if there really is some type of penalty.
EDIT: Have you verified your site in Google Webmaster Tools and looked for any messages there about your site?
Hi Nextman,
You actually found a bug in Open Site Explorer that we are in the process of fixing. Binary files are mistakenly being counted as links. It's a known problem and is already being reduced, but you'll still see some of these for the next couple of months. Here's what Rand has to say about it as part of his larger post about the Linkscape Update.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/november-2011-linkscape-update
As I noted in the September index update, we have had some serious issues when crawling deeper on large domains and encountering binary files that contain code our crawler recognizes and treats as a link. To help stop this problem, we applied a black list to this index to stop a large number of the files folks had reported to us (our estimate is that ~40% of binary files are now removed). However, we know there's still more than a few of these in the database of links so we'll continue cranking away on solutions to remove them all. Our hope is to have them reduced in the next index (November) and nearly eliminated by the December index. If you're ever curious about the next/previous updates, you can always see data for them on our Linkscape calendar.
This is also a good linkbuilding resource.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide
Hi Ralph, just wondering if this happened to you again at all, or if you figured out what was causing it.
Hi Motava,
I'm following up on older questions. Did you find a tool for this? Can you share anything with us for others looking for a similar answer?
SEOmoz has also recently revamped their list of directories. You might check out the post about link building via directories (with a link to the list) at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices.
New backlinks can take up to two months to show in Open Site Explorer, because of the way the crawls are scheduled. Also, OSE only crawls the top 25% of the web, so if some of those links are on old forum threads in low-value sites, they may not show at all. Generally, they will show within two months.
You do lose a little juice with each redirect, so you don't want to be redirecting the same URL multiple times. The potential problems include slowing down the site as well as increasing chance for errors the more entries you put into your file. There are times when it just can't be helped, and it's much better to have the redirects there than a site with a ton of 404s.
Another explanation might be that there are some session ID parameters that are being indexed and totally inflating the internal links to page metric. If you have an ecommerce site or something that is adding session IDs, you could have a huge number of links to the page that are in truth the same link, and Google is recognizing this. Have you looked at the details of those internal links?
Here are a couple of posts about using the canonical tag that should help you. If those don't answer the question for you, I suggest opening a new question with a few more details about your site, and you should get some more feedback.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-block-redirect-or-canonical
Hi Anthony,
Just checking to make sure that this is resolved. If it hasn't sorted itself out, please email help@seomoz.org and open up a ticket. Do let them know which Google site / which country you're targeting.
Thanks!
April, my guess is that it's related to oscommerce or another login/ecommerce/trial purchase module. The oscsid parameter is from oscommerce. Someone logs in, then they get variables appended to the URLs so that they're tracked through the system. That's one place to tell your developer to look.
The general response you'll see in the SEOmoz Q&A is towards spending your time on your main site rather than creating lots of micro sites. Arguments for one site include only having to update/maintain one site instead of five the next time there's an update to the software you're using, and not having to do all of your link building times five (if you have four micro sites and your main site). With microsites, you're often splitting up the value of your sites into pieces, rather than having all of the value go to your one main site.
Have you seen this recent SEOmoz blog post? It may have what you're looking for. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables
I'm so sorry about the frustration you're having. It's not quite 5:00 in the morning Seattle time, so it may be a few more hours before you can get a more complete response. I couldn't sleep and happened to be checking email and saw these replies. What I can offer you right now is Rand's post about this latest update at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/november-2011-linkscape-update. He says the following about the binary file issue:
As I noted in the September index update, we have had some serious issues when crawling deeper on large domains and encountering binary files that contain code our crawler recognizes and treats as a link. To help stop this problem, we applied a black list to this index to stop a large number of the files folks had reported to us (our estimate is that ~40% of binary files are now removed). However, we know there's still more than a few of these in the database of links so we'll continue cranking away on solutions to remove them all. Our hope is to have them reduced in the next index (November) and nearly eliminated by the December index. If you're ever curious about the next/previous updates, you can always see data for them on our Linkscape calendar.
This was a new product that launched in July. More information about the launch is available at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389441,00.asp#fbid=3l_OuvCiiLd.
Diane, I have removed the domain in question from your post. You are much more likely to have someone buy that domain and then try to sell it to you for a large amount of money than you are to find a random person buy it and sell it to you at cost.
I suggest calling GoDaddy (if they are the ones offering it) and work with them on the phone, or find someone you trust to buy it for you.
Hi Gwen,
This post from the help desk addresses several reasons why you may only have one page crawled http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/409821-why-isn-t-my-site-being-crawled-you-only-crawled-one-page#overview. If none of those reasons are applicable to you, it's time to email help@seomoz.org and start a ticket for the help desk to look at your campaign. Thanks so much for using the SEOmoz tools!
In addition to Ryan's good answer, there is specific information about Roberbot and blocking it available at http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot.
Actually, you may be featured on the home page as the fastest growing blog that day or something. I had that once a few years back when Matt Cutts linked to one of my posts on my wordpress.com blog in the comments of his post. Because of the traffic from that post, it hit an algorithm in wordpress.com and the post/domain was linked to from wordpress.com itself.
However, it might be the other way around. My mom visiting a site may be more likely to be logged into gmail and thus logged into Google than I as an SEO. I have one browser that I use just for Google tools (gmail, analytics, etc.) and Facebook. I do all of my other surfing in another browser where I am not logged in. In any case, we're at least more aware of if we are logged in than the regular population. Whether that leads us to be logged in more when we casually surf or less I don't know.
If this is for a client, you can also ask them for any research they have already done into their target audience for their other advertising and marketing efforts, such as buying TV ad time, newspaper ads, or a radio spot.
Rand will also be coming out with a post soon that talks about the latest update and what types of changes users will see. Do keep in mind that OSE only crawls about the top 25% of the web, and that crawl does change from crawl to crawl.
I don't believe that's available right now, but the having a second user on the same account is on the list for future enhancements according to this page in the help desk: http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20199538-is-there-a-way-i-could-add-another-user-to-access-my-pro-account
Can you tell us what your issues are that you're seeing, or link to a previous thread that explains your problem? That might help us be able to help you a bit more.
Some would say cough EGOL cough to spend all that money on killer content for your own site, and that the links would come naturally. Can you tell us anything about the site, and if you have good content in place, good site structure, etc?
This is a bug with Linkscape and OSE, and has nothing to do with Google. In short, Linkscape gets confused when it sees binary files and has wrongly said they are links. We're fixing this problem and it's decreasing with each crawl (you should see fewer of these tomorrow after today's crawl has been released). The other regular links you see are valid.
If you'd like, you can email help@seomoz.org and our help team will help you out as well. I would wait until tomorrow though, when the fresh crawl is available and you have the most current stats, and fewer of the bogus links.
The index is scheduled to be updated later today, according to the calendar at http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule. SEOmoz will generally send a tweet when the new index is live, so keep an eye out there as well.
Hi Daniella,
This is actually a known bug in the Linkscape crawl. In the past it has seen binary files and mistakenly counted them as links. Future crawls are reducing the number of cases in which this happens. So sorry you ran into this problem!
We will certainly tweet about it, and I believe there's a post with information about this update coming in the next few days. It's just still a bit early yet on the West Coast and Roger hasn't made the rounds to Twitter yet.
See this post from Rand that has a section on Keyword Density. Short version is that it doesn't make sense to look at a specific percentage, but make sure that you at least use your keyword on your page, it's readable, and you don't stuff the page. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/some-opinions-on-the-seo-myths-realities-fight
That's one where you do want a 404 returned! That should be fine, and kudos to you for having made a custom page.