I find it interesting that when you search for “search engine” on google, Dogpile comes up #1, then Bing and then Altavista. I could see ranking Bing highly, and definitely Google. But I can’t understand how google would expect Dogpile and Altavista to be two of the most sought after results for this search.
Could this be a weakness in their algorithm?
As I look at he results, the keywords “search engine” are not even in the title tag for Dogpile or Bing or Altavista. For Dogpile and Altavista, obviously domain age might be a factor. Also, Dogpile and Altavista do not have H1 tags with the text “search engine”; nor do they have any text on their homepage with this key phrase.
It’s almost as if on page optimization doesn’t even play a role. It’s backlinks and domain age. It’s probably not traffic related either. What does this search tell us about google’s algorithm?
Things tend to work on a different scale when it comes to a bunch of sites, each with tens of millions of pages, all focusing on broad areas. It’s not so much the H1 or having that specific keyword, its more about the depth and relevance of the content and a heap of other factors, also the number one position isn’t always the most highly sought after funnily enough!
I would recommend checking out this article from Bill over at SEO by the Sea who does a great job of dissecting search algorithms and in this post, explaining how a search engine determines ranking relevance http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=2923
Well I suppose domain age may be a factor - Altavista 1995/Dogpile1996 - but for the order of the results “search engine” is a very generic term, so as Dogpile is a Metasearch engine it’s probably has better relevence than Altavista because it offers users amore comprehensive search.