Why there is THAT site in search results or disambiguation of search query

Sometimes friends and clients complain about competing sites that should not be there:

• No obvious optimization
• Content is crappy, mentions term once and in very different context
• Few or no links
• Design is old and ugly

However, such site is in the first page and sometimes quite high in results. So, what are the reasons for this?

Personally, I have seen a blog that ranked really well under one porn term with single mention in blog post. It had nothing to do with porn industry though.

Sure, we do not know Google algorithm, but my guess is disambiguation of search results plays major role in niche markets. Quite often the key phrase is not enough to determine searcher’s intent and search engine has to provide alternate meanings for the term. Sure, in many cases the Nr1 is site that performs best in terms of SEO, but there is room for different sites as well.

Let’s discuss an example. A person searches for “online poker” – a quite competitive term. In the first page we will see poker rooms, poker information portal, poker forum, some news sites and images. It is not because forum sites and poker rooms are at the same level in terms of SEO. We get these results because Google cannot determine which result is most relevant for us:

• We might want to play online poker in top rooms (highest possibility for the term).
• We might want to read reviews of these rooms
• We might want to discuss about online poker
• We might want to read some related news, etc.
• We might want some local results as well.

Sure, we will not see poor sites under this query in top places. Online Poker is too competitive. However, some of the sites might appear out of nowhere even under this term.

So, what can we conclude from this?

1. Copying top sites is not the fastest way to front page. Unique approach is.
2. The longer the query the more SEO work has an impact.
3. Behavioral analysis and local data will have an impact on what results you get as well. They matter. Guess what sites target users need, and not what they use now.

Thats all today 🙂