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I'm curious about situations where a website ranks very well for query variations, but doesn't rank for the query itself (or the reverse of that). For Redfin (where I work), here is the situation with regard to keyword rankings on Google (searched today from USA, incognito)... real estate search - #4 real estate online - #4 real estate site - #5 find real estate - #9 get real estate - #16 real estate - #163 It stands to reason that a site ranking well for a competitive query should also rank well for less competitive query variations - especially query variations that are non-limiting and do not demand a custom landing page (for example, I would consider 'board games' to dramatically limit the query 'games' and be best targeted with a targeted page...not so with 'real estate site' and 'real estate'). So, my question is, what are some theories regarding situations like this? Why do some sites rank so well for competitive queries but not for non-limiting query variations? Why aren't the sites that are crushing us for 'real estate' also crushing us for 'real estate' variations (to be clear...the top sites are crushing us for both)? Is it anchor text? Is it social signals? Is it offline signals, co-occurrence, or citations? What about internal linking and site structure? I realize it's likely a mix of all this, but I'm hoping we can drum up some new ideas here. FYI, on Bing we also rank very well for 'real estate' variations, but leap up to 31st for 'real estate'. Thoughts?

I noticed something in Google search results today that I can't explain. Any help would be appreciated. I performed a real estate based search and the top result featured a rich snippet showcasing the following... Address                                                                     Price            Bd/Ba
912 Garden District Dr #17. Charlotte, NC 28202      $179,990       3 / 2
222 S Caldwell St #1602. Charlotte, NC 28202          $389,238       2 / 2&1/2 However, when I visit the page associated with this information, there is no Schema to be found. In fact, the page is, for the most part, just a large table listing homes on the market. The table headings are Address, Price, and Bd/Ba. Is it common for Google to use table based data to generate rich snippets? What is the best way to influence this? In the absence of Schema (as the page we are talking about has no Schema implementation), does Google default to table data? Has anyone seen this behavior before and, if so, can you point me to it? EDIT: I've now come across a few other examples where the information is not in a table, but rather in divs. Why are such sites (you can find some by searching for "[ZIPCODE] real estate") getting this treatment?

I'm asking for people's opinions on varying internal anchor text. Before you jump in and say, "Oh yes, varying your anchor text is always a good idea", let me explain. I'm not talking about varying anchor text on different links scattered throughout a site. We all know that is a wise thing to do for a variety of reasons that have been covered in many places. What I'm talking about is including semi-useful links below the fold and then varying the anchor text with each page load. Each time Googlebot crawls a page, it sees different anchor text for each link. That way, Googlebot is seeing, for example, 'san diego bars', 'taverns in san diego', 'san diego clubs', and 'pubs in san diego' all pointing to a San Diego bar/tavern/club/pub page. I'm wondering if there is value in this approach. Will it help a site rank well for multiple search queries? Could it potentially be better than static anchor text as it may help Google better understand the targeted page? Is it a good way to protect a large site with a huge number of internal links from Penguin? To summarize, we're talking about the impact of varying the anchor text on a single page with each page load as opposed to varying the anchor text on different pages. Thoughts?

On June 7th, 2013 our structured data (as reported in GWT) dropped from ~61M items on ~7M pages to ~13.5M items on ~1.5M pages. Since that time those numbers have continued to fall. We made no code changes during this time. I've searched around the web and found a few people pointing to a similar June 7th, 2013 drop in reported structured data. Can anyone offer any insight beyond speculation? Outside of the June 7th date, what can cause such a dramatic drop in structured data? Thanks in advance.

Does OSE have the ability to crawl AJAX pages utilizing Google's escaped fragment directive? I ask because I'm seeing all our AJAX built pages returning HTTP status codes of 404 when I run OSE reports. See for yourself

My URL is: http://www.redfin.com/TX/Austin/8413-Navidad-Dr-78735/home/31224372 We're using Google's AJAX crawling system, per the documentation here. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/The example page above requires JavaScript to display content; it includes in the source. We have a lot of pages like this on our site.We expect Google to query us at this URL:http://www.redfin.com/TX/Austin/8413-Navidad-Dr-78735/home/31224372?escaped_fragment=This page renders correctly with JavaScript disabled.Are we doing this correctly? There are some small differences between the escaped_fragment HTML snapshot and the JavaScript-generated content. Will this cause any problems for us?We ask because there was a period of about two months (from October 4th to Dec 29th) during which Google's crawler radically decreased the hits to our escaped_fragment URLs; it's maybe recovering now, but maybe it isn't, and I wanted to be absolutely sure we're doing this correctly.

Anyone have any experience using PhantomJS to return HTML snapshots of AJAX rendered pages? More specifically, does anyone know if Google takes issue with this technique in any way? Interested in learning about this technique? Using PhantomJS to allow Googlebot to crawl your AJAX pages.

Does anyone know what the impact of a nofollowed link is on the ranking value any given page has to distribute? For example, if I have 2 links on a page, both followed, I know those links each distribute nearly 50% of the total ranking value the current page has to offer. However, if one of those links is nofollowed, does that automatically mean the other link gets the ranking value cast off by the nofollowed link? In other words, the single followed link now distributes nearly 100% of the ranking value the page has to offer? It seems to me I remember hearing this was not the case and that the ranking value a nofollowed link would have if it were followed just evaporates. This would mean the single followed link still only passes on around 50%...not 100%. Is the effect different if the links are internal vs. external? If any citations are available to justify knowledge here, that would be great. I know a lot of people have opinions about this subject, but I'm not sure anyone knows Google's position. Thanks!

If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.

Is there a better day for link baiting than April 1st? The time has come for everyone to share their April Fool's Day link building campaigns! This is our second attempt at capitalizing on April Fools with the first attempt (2010) falling flat. http://bigfi.sh/aFd2011

Wondering who else will be attending the Link Building Seminar March 25th in New Orleans.

Can anyone weigh in on their own efforts to build links into international TLDs? Which tactics have been successful? Which have failed? Have you engaged any agencies to manage this for you and if so, how did they perform and who are they? We have nine ccTLDs plus our .com site to manage so it's a bit overwhelming! Fortunately, we have teams dedicated to managing day-to-day operations of each site. Each team is comprised of managers who speak the targeted language as their first language and have intimate knowledge of the targeted culture. I want to leverage them to help my SEO efforts, but I'm not sure how my advice should be different than what we do for our .com site.