Local Rank stuff...

[chromate]

After much negotiation, I've managed to secure myself a "page-for-page" link exchange with the current #1 site in google for "carbohydrate counter". We have pretty much exactly the same PR for each page according to the tool bar, so it's a pretty fair exchange.

Let's see how this helps my rankings. I'm currently ranked #101.

[Chris]

Good luck.

[chromate]

Cheers Chris. It'll be interesting to see what the result is anyway.

[nohaber]

chromate,
good luck. This stuff is very interesting.

I just wanted to say a few things about the local rank algo.
The localscore is based on the top K (probably around 20) keyword relevant pages pointing to you. If you now have 1 page, its relevance score will be divided by some number to get your localscore(the other 19 spots are 0). So, probably it is a good idea to find ALL pages in the google results that are ranked for carbohydrate counter and exchange links with them(directories are the best, because they don't compete with you, and you can place their links on your links page).

The other thing is that google detects links from your other sites(by IP) and from other sites with very similar content. The page that you have exchanged links with looks similar at least for the food categories. I hope google doesn't think the pages are nearly duplicates.

btw. why the link on your site ends with "carb counter" and not "carbohydrate counter". I am just curious(the link should be counted as a good on-page factor).

Cheers

[chromate]

I've been trying to do exchanges with the other sites on the first page too. Funnily enough, the #1 site was the only one that even replied to my mails. I also have a couple of links from DMOZ which should help (though, they don't seem to have helped, so far!)

Interesting you should say that google detects sites from the same IP linking to each other. Shortly before this update I decided to link to carbohydrate counter at the bottom of every page on my Weight Loss Tips site (about 10 pages). The site has the same IP. Do you think this could have contributed to my decline in the SERPs? How do you know Google look at the IP?

I removed pretty much all my "carbohydrate counter" keyword text from the front page, as I wasn't sure if there is some filter in play. All the top sites barely mention the text at all, so when mine was plucked out the SERPs, that was the only difference I could see. Also, those links are to my competitor's site, so I didn't want to contribute to his keyword based anchor text. He calls his carbohydrate counter a "carb counter" anyway, so it worked out well.

[nohaber]

chromate,
look for directories to exchange links with. It won't matter even if they are on 990 SERP, it will be good for the local score. The only important part is that the page pointing to you is relevant to the keywordz. Your link on their page will also boost their relevance to the keyword, which should be good for your local score. The good thing is that you place their link on your links page, while they put your link in the "keyword relevant page".
Note, that the SERPs don't reveal the original relevance score, but the modified relevant * localscore. If the dmoz page that points to you is in the results for "carbohydrate counter" it should help. I asked about the link, because when links on your page include YOUR keywords, it should help your score(esp. if they are links to other sites).

I don't think there's any filter, over-optimization or whatever thing. Every factor has an upper limit (or score influence), so that no matter how many keywords you stuff, only the first or top N would matter(it is probably some logarithmic function).

If you exchange front-page links with more sites, the others will get you :) Another good thing is to separate your link pages into categories. They will appear in the SERPs for other keywords, and many people will ask you for link exchanges. For example, if you have a page for "Fitness Software Links" I will gladly exchange links with you(so will my competitors). This will build overall page rank(not local score). Everyone will want to trade links with you. Look for the top sites on "diet", "fitness" etc. They are mostly link exchange PR based. So you get high overall PR + local score PR.

Now, for the IP. I will paste the part of the google patent that interests you.
Enjoy.

"Re-ranking component 122 begins by identifying the documents in the initial set that have a hyperlink to document x. (Act 301). The set of documents that have such hyperlinks are denoted as B(y). Documents from the same host as document x tend to be similar to document x but often do not provide significant new information to the user. Accordingly, re-ranking component 124 removes documents from B(y) that have the same host as document x. (Act 302). More specifically, let IP3(x) denote the first three octets of the IP (Internet Protocol) address of document x (i.e., the IP subnet). If IP3(x)=IP3(y), document y is removed from B(y).

On occasion, multiple different hosts may be similar enough to one another to be considered the same host for purposes of Acts 301 and 302. For example, one host may be a "mirror" site for a different primary host and thus contain the same documents as the primary host. Additionally, a host site may be affiliated with another site, and thus contain the same or nearly the same documents. Similar or affiliated hosts may be determined through a manual search or by an automated web search that compares the contents at different hosts. Documents from such similar or affiliated hosts may be removed by re-ranking component 124 from B(y) in Act 302.

Re-ranking component 124 next compares all pairs of documents in B(y) for any pair in which IP3(first document of the pair)=IP3(second document of the pair), and removes the document of the pair from B(y) that has the lower OldScore value. (Acts 303-306). In other words, if there are multiple documents in B(y) for the same (or similar or affiliated) host IP address, only the document most relevant to the user's search query, as determined by the document's OldScore, is kept in B(y). Documents are removed from B(y) in this manner to prevent any single author of web content from having too much of an impact on the ranking value. "

[chromate]

That's really interesting! Looks like I should definitely get another IP address. My host wont give me a second IP address that has a different subnet. What's the best way to do this? Would it be easiest to move Carbohydrate Counter to a different host in order to get the different subnet? Or is there a cheaper way to do it?

Where can I see the whole Local Rank google patent? I haven't really bothered looking into it too much, but I think now I should take the time to get my head around it. It looks interesting anyway.

[Chris]

You could just get another hosting account. ITs $5-$10. If your site makes money its worth it.

I'm not sure Google is using IP addresses in this manner yet, but what I did is put my hub site on a different IP and a couple of my bigger/money makers on different ips as well. I can get like 8 IPs per server through rackshack so..

[chromate]

I think I will put it on another hosting account. It's definitely making enough money to make it worth while.

I was going through the SERPs and found this category listing from Yahoo...

Health > Weight Issues > Weight Loss > Carbohydrate Counters

I also noticed that the current #1 site is listed in that category. Needless to say, I've applied to that category :) With any luck...

[MarkB]

Would an IP numbers such as:

123.456.78.910
123.456.78.911

Be considered different enough for the above to have any effect?

[chromate]

According to the clip pasted above, No. Because they have the same subnet.

[MarkB]

Well... bum.

I might try moving one of my sites to my secondary server (with another host) to see if it makes any difference. Although it won't show for a while, I guess. :)

[Jaffro]

wow technical stuff. very intresting read thanks nohaber.

[nohaber]

First of all, DON'T MOVE YOUR SITES.
It won't work. It's too technical to explain. Even if it works which is kinda very unlikely, it will be somewhere in the very distant future :)
Just remember, to put all your future sites on different hosts.

chromate,
get that yahoo listing, and I'm sure you'll be in the top 10, if not #1. When I get the #1 spot for my primary keywordz, I hope I will be in top 100 for the secondary keword "carb counter" and we could exchange links.

Chris,
google's patent on detecting duplicate and near duplicate documents, as well as query specific duplicate and near duplicate documents, as well as the local reranking patent are 3 years old. Google has been using IPs, similar documents info for a long time.

I'd like to set up an experiment. We need a website that is not changing at all and has had a stable not-so-good google ranking for some time. In the next month, everyone of us will bookmark his main keyword page, and we will pay him a visit 2-3 times a day, and click around his site. The site must have google adwords to be able to track our activity. I bet his ranking will improve in the next "Florida-like" SERP upgrade :]

If some of you has such a site, I'd really like to participate in this experiment. Let's repeat the perfect candidate's site features:
1) does not change
2) has been for a while with a bad ranking, but is in top 1000
3) won't change anything in the next month
4) probable has less that 1000 visits per day(our visits should be statistically significant)
[That experiment is because I think document usage already plays a role in the rankings, although they are recalculated once in a month or so, and every time we will have a "Florida" thing]
Cheers

[chromate]

Hmmm... I think that last theory is clutching at straws a bit nohaber :) For google to implement such a thing, it would take one hell of a lot of logging (major implications). The higher docs in the SERPs would also naturally get a higher usage, this would have to be taken into account - again having major implications. I can't see something like this as being even remotely practical for google to implement. Still, I'll participate for the hell of it :)

Why would it not be worth moving the site to a different host? Please explain! I need to understand...

[Mike]

Yeah, I'm interested in what chromate asked. Does google check the domain name owner or something?!?

[nohaber]

It's difficult to explain everything(English is not my native lang. at all).
Why don't everyone read the patents and after that we can discuss them.
Go to: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
There are 2 searches, one for issued, and one for published patents. Search for "an/google" (asignee "google") and read all of the 8 papers(ok, you can skip the "ambiguous query papers")

Then come back and we can get all the peices together.:D
Happy reading.

Cheers

[Mike]

I'll have a read later. Btw, you do well to say your native language isn't english:)

[incka]

I'm getting confused... Does this mean the links to our sites on places like here won't bring and PR any more?

[r2d2]

How exactly is Google tracking document usage nohaber?

[Chris]

Chris,
google's patent on detecting duplicate and near duplicate documents, as well as query specific duplicate and near duplicate documents, as well as the local reranking patent are 3 years old. Google has been using IPs, similar documents info for a long time.


First of all, having a patent and using it are two different things entirely. Second of all unless you're sure of something you shouldn't say it with such certainty.

Up until November I was #1 on every coupon search I tried for with only incoming links from the same IP address. So unless your definition of "quite some time" is "from December" you're incorrect.

Furthermore the use of IP addresses makes absolutely no sense when dealing with pages, as opposed to sites. Most internal site pages are going to have a preponderance of same-ip incoming links. How do you handle that? Google is not out to rank sites, they're out to rank pages. People often forget that.

Google has also publicly stated that they do not like to give IP address bans because they know how hosting works. Thus we have a precedent where they do not like to do things via IP address.




Now, my question to you, is where do you get the notion that site activity is going to influence Google Rank for pages that advertise with AdWords. Unless when you meant AdWords you meant AdSense then I'd ask why Google has persistently lied the many many times they have vehemently stated that AdWords & AdSense have no bearing on your rankings.

[incka]

I think google will lean more on sites with links from similar pages, but as Chris said, all the IP stuff seems like B***S***...

The duplicate content thing will mean all sites, such as online book sites, will be dropped because they have the same books. You must have got this wrong. Google will not be harsh on duplicate content or alot of the web wouldn't be listed.

[nohaber]

Chris,
you are right - having a patent and using it are 2 different things. The patents I have read are from 3 years ago.

I haven't said that incoming links from the same IP don't count. I am saying that they only count for the overall PR, not the local score.

I don't understand what do you mean on the sites vs pages issue. I am only saying that google does not count same IP3 pages in the local score(which is just a part of all the factors). Based on the patents, I am 100% sure that google detects the same or nearly the same documents(like the same articles on other sites) and marks them as identical or nearly identical. When google generates the intitial set of candidate pages (for the search query), google removes duplicate pages and query-specific duplicate documents(another patent). Otherwise we will see the same most relevant documents for a given query. But we see different pages! Moreover, if a site has too many identical pages as another site, it is marked as an affiliate, and the incoming links from an affiliate site does not count in the local score(probably it also count in the initial relevance score).

I think everyone took the local score to heart too much. Look, dmoz pages don't have any incoming links from the top results, and they still rank in top 10 (although they give local rank to other pages). Please, don't twist what I am saying.

I never said anything about IP bans. I just say that certain links are given zero priority on the local score(if google wants, they can also give zero score for the initial relevance rankings).

Where do I got the usage ranking idea?
1) Google has a patent on it
2) Certain pages fall from the search results. I have the following explanation:

When a user puts a query, let's say "fitness software", google looks at the inverse index for "fitness" and "software". The inverse index contains ALL pages that contain a certain word. For both words ("fitness" and "software") there are millions of documents that contain them. Do you think google ranks them all every time a search is initiated??? HELL NO. That's impossible. If google tries to find all documents that contain both "fitness" and "software", google will have to go through MILLIONS of documents, which is impossible. Instead of this, google goes through the TOP N documents for a given word and calculates its rank. Suppose, that I search for "fitness software": google will have to find all documents that contain both "fitness" and "software", calculate their relevancy, and include proximity info for the ranknings(how close is fitness to software in a given document). It is impossible to answer a query quickly this way. It IS IMPOSSIBLE. So google, has to pre-sort the inverted index. So lets say that the word "software" is contained in 1000000 documents. They will be sorted by some rank into: "software", document1(highest score), document2..... and google will look only into the top (not more than 10000). The question is: "how does google sort its inverted index"?? It is not only the pagerank that matters, because higher-page-rank pages fall off the top 1000 pages. So, what are the additional scores that play?? I am 99% sure, that it is the usage score that plays here. The usage score is calculated by adsense and toolbar info. It could be the absolute number of visitors or a relative to previous periods of time visitors(for example, this month you can have 10% more visitors). I can't explain how a high PR page will fall from the initial Candidate Results Set(1000 pages). Can you give another explanation? I don't believe in overoptimization things.

The inverted index is a very big data structure, and now I am thinking it is rebuilt very rarely together with the PageRank. PageRank calculation is a time-consuming task, on a graph of billions of vertices.

Here's another example. Hours after google updated the page rank and inverted index, I changed my main page from "training software", "nutrition software" and optimized it to "diet software", "fitness software". After that I exchanged links with top "fitness software" pages. I am still not in the top 1000 results. WHY? Because, google, rebuilds its inverted index once a month or something and uses both PageRank and OTHER factors. Now, some PR1 pages are appearing, instead of my PR4 page! When google crawled it, and then indexed it(after having sorted the inverted index), it found it is too different from the previous page, and it marked it as DIFFERENT, and that's why I currently don't appear in the results. Google waits to recalculate the inverted index scores.

I think people are twisting my words here. I am saying that the main factors are:
PR -> ALL incoming links
+ usage info + other factors place a page on a given rank in the inverted index(candidate results, initial relevance score)
For any page to appear in the results, it has to have a PR + the other factors and has to wait for the next inverted index update. The initial candidate results are produced from the above index, all duplicate and query-specific duplicate documents are removed and probably links from affiliate or same IP addresses are ranked less, that links from unaffiliated sites.

After the initial candidate results are calculated using the sorted inverted index + proximity for multiple word queries, google does the local inter-connectivity reranking and shows the results. That's it. That's all I am saying. Every page, that has fallen off the results, is not in the initial candidate results. Google does not process all documents containing a word, because it will slow down the query. Every page has to do the following:
1) build PR + use the keywords + other on-page factors + be requested(usage stats, according to me) to appear in the candidate results
2) then local score reranks the pages.
A page can be #1 without any local score, it really depends on the competition.

I hope, someone understands me. Please, read the original Brin and Page paper on Google + all the patents.

Cheers

[chromate]

Google don't like duplicate content. Fact. To what extent do they look for the duplicate content? Who knows.

The IP stuff doesn't seem like BS to me at all. We're not talking IP based bans as such, they're just been figured into the ranking algorithms. Of course, that's not to say Google are actually doing this. But I'm trying to cover all possibilities here :) It makes a lot of sense though. Google is based on a "voting system" right? Any voting system is made weaker by people being able to vote for themselves. I think this is the biggest weakness of the original concept behind PR. Google will almost certainly be trying to diminish this weakness. Looking at the correlation between IP's is one way to do this.

I've read through the local rank patent now and it seems to make a lot of sense. If they have implemented it then I would imagine they've modified it some what. But it probably works along the same lines.

I still don't understand why moving the site to another host wouldn't work though. The patent says that they would look at the first 3 octets of an IP address, that being the subnet of a class C IP address. I doubt that would have changed. If we move a site to another subnet, then why wouldn't that work?

[chromate]

I've just noticed in fact that the current #1, #2 and #3 site for carbohydrate counter are all listed in that Carbohydrate Counter Yahoo directory category. Looks like I really need to get a spot in that category. Hmmm... could take ages. :/

[Chris]

For someone with no proof you've got a lot of wild theories you seem awfully sure of.

I think that Google is likely drawing up a result set and reranking it based on local-interconnectivity. On that we agree.

The rest of your post is pretty out there.

[nohaber]

First, I'm sorry, wherever I wrote AdWords, should be read AdSense.

Chris,
there's one simple way to test my wild theories, and that's visiting a particular stale site for one month.
How do you explain, that sites with high PR fall off the google results? There's something more than PR. The local reranking stuff is done on the final 1000 candidate results, but why pages with high PR don't get in these 1000 candidate results? Local reranking is not new, because I have seen old articles noticing how DMOZ helps a lot(through local reranking). The patent is also old, and I don't think google's developers needed 3 years to put it into code.

There's something new on google. The only other possible thing I can think of is word stemming(pages with "optimizations" kicking out pages for "optimization" or sth).

Do you have a theory on this one?

On the changing the IP stuff.
If sites(pages) A and B have the same IP3 then they are labeled in the same affiliate group. If 2 sites have too much duplicate or near-duplicate content, their pages are also labeled with the same affiliate group.
Now let's say you change the IP of site B. Google will crawl it as a completely new site, and when google indexes it, it will find that it is duplicate with the old B site, which still wouldn't have fallen from googles data. If a site X is affiliate with Y, and Y is affiliate with Z, then X and Z are also affiliates(by affiliate I mean duplicate content or IP3). I don't think google would treat the changed IP of site B as a new site, even in the future. Once a site is labeled an affiliate, it shouldn't change its affiliateID group unless both the IP and its CONTENT change.
Basically changing the IP of site B wouldn't break its affiliate connection to site A. I wouldn't pay money for another IP just to find that google is smart.

Cheers

[nohaber]

r2d2,
sorry.
The document usage can be tracked by the AdSense and the google toolbar. Everytime googleads appear google may log the IP. Every time you request a page, google toolbar requests its pagerank and it can be logged. Based on AdSense, very precise doc. usage can be obtained. Based on the google toolbar, it could be scaled by the % of users that have the toolbar or sth. Further the number of the times the site is shown in the results could play.
The doc. usage score(if it exists) should play a marginal role, but on sites with a lot of competitions it should help. Read the original patent, the main idea of google was that a site needs time to get a good rank, while usage stats may be combined with the PR to get a combined rank and good sites will appear in the results faster.
Also google may use it for some keywords.

Anyway, the patent is old. If I were google I would experiment on this, and a human will compare the results with the innovation. If it improves the relevancy, it could be incorporated in google, otherwise, it would be just one of the many tried ideas at google :)

That's what I think based on google's advice: "Make pages for visitors" (visitors may influence your rankings).

Cheers

[chromate]

Originally posted by nohaber
On the changing the IP stuff.
If sites(pages) A and B have the same IP3 then they are labeled in the same affiliate group. If 2 sites have too much duplicate or near-duplicate content, their pages are also labeled with the same affiliate group.
Now let's say you change the IP of site B. Google will crawl it as a completely new site, and when google indexes it, it will find that it is duplicate with the old B site, which still wouldn't have fallen from googles data. If a site X is affiliate with Y, and Y is affiliate with Z, then X and Z are also affiliates(by affiliate I mean duplicate content or IP3). I don't think google would treat the changed IP of site B as a new site, even in the future. Once a site is labeled an affiliate, it shouldn't change its affiliateID group unless both the IP and its CONTENT change.
Basically changing the IP of site B wouldn't break its affiliate connection to site A. I wouldn't pay money for another IP just to find that google is smart.

This doesn't quite seem right. Otherwise every site on the same IP address would be considered the same site. Remember that the crawl is seperate to the ranking procedures. Once google crawles the site, it will find that the domain is associated with a new IP and that is all. I don't think it would consider it to be a totally new site purely because it has the same domain. This will be used in the initial result set and THEN that will be used to find interlinking between affiliated sites (with the same IP3). At least, from looking at the patent, that's how I understand it.

[nohaber]

chromate,
read the "detecting duplicate documents" patent.

cheers

[Chris]

There's something new on google.


Thats true. But you're posting very specific claims with no proof of any sort. It has only been a couple months, not long enough to do any real experimentation.



How do you explain, that sites with high PR fall off the google results?


PR is completely independent of context. Yahoo has a very high PR but when I search for "search engine friendly URLs" Yahoo is not the #1 site. With the localrank issue sites that got their high PR from completely unrelated pages may be dropped. Or, perhaps Google simply has a new kind of spam filter. There is no way to know for sure yet, not enough time has passed.



The patent is also old, and I don't think google's developers needed 3 years to put it into code.


Like I said. #1 rankings on very competitive phrases from nothing but same-IP incoming links from unrelated sites.



On the changing the IP stuff.


You have nothing to back that idea up. Also who cares about money? IP addresses are just about free and if you're seriously making money its worth it to spend $2 for an IP address or $5-$10 for a new hosting account if there is a chance it will make a difference.

I can understand not wanting to make the expenditure if your site is a poor performer, but then if you don't have successful sites I would question your experience in this field.

As for your "usage-rank" idea. That just doesn't work. A couple companies have tried that in the past and it doesn't work. It also doesn't explain any recent ranking changes. It doesn't work because some sites are immensely more popular than others. For instance if you searched for something medieval related you might get an Everquest site because that game is so popular, as opposed to a history department page from a university. It just doesn't work to look at raw usage data.

Now you could like a click-through rates on search results, but then Google has been looking at those (academically they say) for years.

[chromate]

Well... That's it... Overnight, I've been dropped completely for "carbohydrate counter".

There's no way to explain this. I just don't get it. What the hell is wrong.

:( :( :( :( :(

EDIT: actually, no I haven't. the tool at digitalpoint just didn't pick it up for some reason.

[nohaber]

chromate,
maybe we have to wait for the next index update, which I really hope will be soon(i am also waiting to see if my site would benefit from the link exchanges i did).

btw. your main page seems too-underoptimized. You have one title, one anchor text pointing to the page itself and that's all. And at the bottom you have merged the two words into: caloriecounter.org instead of calorie-counter.org, and the image has no alt tags.

You are playing it too safe :o

[nohaber]

I saw you have links from 2 pages, placed before yours: one was a post on this forum, and the other was a dmoz page. They should help you, I just don't understand why a page from this forum is ranked before your page.
Maybe you have underoptimized or sth.

cheers

[chromate]

Yeah, it doesn't make sense at all. My page was well optimized (see carbohydrate-counter.org/index_keep.php) But after google dumped me to rank #175 I was looking for reasons. I thought it could be over-optimized so I reduced the keyword density big time. After looking at the top 10 sites (that are all really poorly optimized), I decided that it wouldn't make any difference anyway. The following night my ranking increased to #101.

I'll revert it back to the old index page and see if that makes any difference.

Looking at the top sites, I should be number #1. Being ranked #101 makes no sense.

[nohaber]

chromate,
i don't think your page is optimized for "carbohydrate counter".
Of course, I am no-one to give SEO advice, but I'll express my opinion and suggestions.

My suggestions are based on the original google paper + some speculations.

1. I think that in multiple word searches, google finds for each word the closest other query words and determines the type-of-proximity. I don't think a word participates in MORE THAN ONE multiple word search match. So, a text like this: "carbohydrate counter determines if the carbohydrate content of foods..." the second carbohydrate won't help. Google will determine that the first carbohydrate is closer to the counter and only use this pair to add to the score(the "counter" won't be used in another match to boost the score). Moreover, if the document contains only 5 "counter" words, and let's say 20 "carbohydrate" words, this might indicate that the document is not about the search phrase, although this is pure speculation on my side. I suggest for multiple word queries like "carbohydrate counter" to have the same number (or close numbers) of "carbohydrate" and "counter" words in the text(best is to be phrase matches). If you have to use carbohydrate without counter, you can use counter somewhere next to this to actually indicate "carbohydrate counter" (for example: the carbohydrate content of the foods is determined by our counter..."). This will make the text more readable, because it will eliminate all unnecessary "carbohydrate" usage.

2. Google uses one bit for capitalization. Wherever possible capitalize and use "Carbohydrate Counter", not "carbohydrate counter".

3. I don't think keyword density plays a role in the ranking. Judging from the original paper, it is the number of times a word is used in the document for every TYPE OF HIT. Here's what I mean:
Google's indexer saves for each word hit: capitalization bit, "relative font size", word position. The relative font size is very interesting. The first google used 3 bits for font size(8 possible values from 0-7). 7 meant a fancy hit (title, url, anchor text..). The other values indicate the relative size of the used font. For example, the text with the biggest font is ranked as 7. When ranking a document, google gets the number of hits FOR EACH HIT TYPE. For example:
fancy hits: 8 times
fancy subtypes..
biggest font: 2 times
...
smallest font: 5 times.

Next google determines count-weight for each type of hit (I'll cite the paper):
"Google counts the number of hits of each type in the hit list. Then every count is converted into a count-weight. Count-weights increase LINEARLY WITH COUNTS AT FIRST BUT QUICKLY TAPER OFF so that more than a certain count will not help. We take the dot product of the vector of count-weights with the vector of type-weights to compute an IR score for the document. Finally, the IR score is combined with PageRank to give a final rank to the document."
How do you interpret this? I interpret it like that: For every type of hit, initially the count weight increase linearly, after that it increases by a decreasing step, and eventually does not increase. Let's say that for the biggest font type of hit, the first 3 hits are counted by 1, hits from the 4th to the 8th increase the ranking a little(for example the 4th may be counted 0.5, the 5th 0.25,the 6the 0.12..), and after that you can repeat the keyword(s) as many time as you like but it won't improve the score :)

What do most people do? They stuff one type of hit list and neglect all the others. But every type of hit exhausts its influence at some time. I suggest spreading the keywords to different types of hits. Let's say like this:
count hit type
2-5 outgoing links
2-5 image alt tags
1-3 biggest font
2-10 next to the biggest font
..
You get the picture? I suggest that stuffing the text with "SAME FONT" keywords won't help too much.

I think that bold/italic fonts might be some subtypes of the fonts, for example: big font bold, big font, smaller font bold, smaller font, smallest font bold, smallest font or something. By spreading the keywords to different types of hits (fonts, fancy hits) the page will look much more user friendly and search engine ranking friendly.

In your case, why don't you bold the text at the bottom, and instead of caloriecounter.org use bolded "Calorie-Counter.org". Put alt to the first image. Use "carbohydrate counter" in links. Write more content. It will be links using "carbohydrate counter" to your content. Here's a couple of suggestions for content:

1) Something with Calorie Counter and yogurt. The carbs in plain yogurt are 3 times less than USDA says. It's because the lactofermentation probiotics eat the lactose(type of milk sugar) and turn it into lactic acid. USDA determines carbs "BY DIFFERENCE", which means it counts everything else, and ASSUMES that the rest is carbs. In the case of plain yogurt, 2/3 of the carbs are already eaten and 2/3 of the resulting "carbs by difference" is lactic acid :) There was one research study that determined that from 2 groups put on isocaloric diets(the same number of calories) the group that consumed yogurt lost more weight (they speculate it's because of the Calcium content);] You can even manually divide the carb content of all plain yogurts in your DB by 3.
2) you can write an article on "your carbohydrate counter showing net carbs" or carbs without the fiber. Fiber is labeled a carb, but it is not digestible. My program has presubtracted all fiber from the total carbs(by difference). I even found 3 buggy foods, yeilding negative carb grams :] (SR16)
3) I can think of some more content for you if you give me some incentive, like a link or sth :] I have been low-carbing for 3 years, and have consulted more than 3000 people and know everything about low-carb diets.


Now let's repeat:
1) use capitalization for the keywords
2) use bold wherever possible(bold vs not bold = different type of hits, more room for ranking formula exhaustment). So some bolded, and some not bolded hits.
3) erase all other "carbohydrate" hits, use only "Carbohydrate Counter".
4) put alt tags. you can put some image at the top, and use its alt tags for ranking.
5) fix that font and carbohydratecounter.org at the bottom to <b>Carbohydrate-Counter.org</b>
6) add more images with alt tags, biggest font hits
7) add content using "Carbohydrate Counter" in the anchor text
8) search for "original google paper" and read it, it is simple and very very interesting

Hope that helps.
Cheers, I'll have to immerse in a Prilepin's table powerlifting article :]

[chromate]

Hmmm.. Interesting. You need to remember that it's all relative to the competition though. With my current optimization, I should still be at least on the first page and at the VERY least, better than on the 10th page ;) So whilst you make some interesting points, it's not really enough to solve the main problem of why Google have ranked me on the 10th page :)

I've been put their for a reason, and I don't think lack of optimization is a contributory factor really. Since November until this last update, I've been ranked #3 / #2. That made sense. Something has come into play in this latest update that's just not right. Problem is, I don't know what and no one else seems to either! :(

[incka]

You know Chris charges $1000 for an SEO report like that...

[incka]

[DUPLICATE POST - PLEASE REMOVE]

[Chris]

My reports are 10+ pages.

[nohaber]

Size DOES matter :D :D

[chromate]

Especially when you're paying $1k ;) lol