Google's Site Search
Some amateurs in the SEO industry try to test the Google ranking algorithm by creating test pages which are almost identical, except for one element or another. This is all good, and can produce intriguing results. However, we must warn that when Google's
Site Search and/or
Unfiltered Results Search is used, the normal ranking algorithm is not applied.
For this reason, Site Search is useless for testing the ranking algorithm.
Site Search
Sample One
Do a search for
Kawasaki Mule. The first URL returned from
Kawasaki-Info.com will be the index page of that site.
Screenshot.
Now try a Site Search, limiting results to pages from
Kawasaki-Info.com. The search term should be same as before,
Kawasaki Mule. ... Did you do it? As you can see, with a site search, Google returns not the index page, but the
Mule 3010 4X4 page instead.
Screenshot.
These results show that Google's normal ranking algorithm has not been applied.
Sample Two
Do a search for
Concrete Home. The first page listed from the domain Concrete-Home.com is
not the index page. The first page listed from that domain is:
http://www.concrete-home.com/discussion/viewforum.php?f=10.
Screenshot.
Now do a site search for the same search term. Doing a site search for
concrete home currently returns the index page first. This same test has been done on several sites, with similar results.
Screenshot
Unfiltered Results
Unfiltered results (filter=0) can also be shown to be
non-algorithmically ranked.
Sample
For this test, let's do a standard Google search for
Beartooth Kawasaki. In search results, we will see Google returned two pages from
BeartoothKawasaki.com:
1. www.beartoothkawasaki.com
2. www.beartoothkawasaki.com/kawasaki_special.php
Screenshot.
Now if we perform the same search with
unfiltered results, the search results change thus:
1. www.beartoothkawasaki.com
2. www.beartoothkawasaki.com/index.php
Screenshot.
Thereby showing that Google's standard ranking algorithm has
not been applied to this search.
When a user performs a site search, it is our opinion that Google is simply providing a listing of the relevant URL's. This is just a theory, of course. The only thing we know for a fact is that Google's Site Search and Unfiltered searches often produce non-algorithmically ranked results. For this reason, test results done using Site Search and Unfiltered Results should be considered meaningless and disregarded.
