I've got a really quick update regarding my "'Karl Ribas' on Amazon?" post that I feel is worth sharing, and instead of going through the effort of adding to and editing my original post, I figured that a new post is the way to go. If you haven't yet had an opportunity to read my first entry, please do so:

http://blog.karlribas.com/2006/09/karl-ribas-on-amazon.htm

Before I dive into this, I'd like to 'thank' Michael Roebuck, who after reading my original post decided to do some research of his own. He provided some great feedback, and most of what I'll be adding today is based on his findings. Ok... on to the good stuff!

According to Overture's search tool, a quick check for the keyword "Internet Marketing Consultant" shows that the keyword "Karl Ribas Internet Marketing Consultant" was searched 66 times last month. Here's a snap-shot:

Now I happen to know, just call it a hunch, that these searches relating to my name are indeed inflated... meaning that there is no value in optimizing for that exact term because nobody is actually searching it. However, Amazon and the rest of the world wouldn't know this. They, as well as everybody else, would be under the assumption that the term "Karl Ribas Internet Marketing Consultant" gets about 66 searches each month.

The THEORY that Michael and I have (and I stress THEORY) is that Amazon, in an attempt to rank higher for popular keywords in general, has "optimized" a page for the term "Karl Ribas Internet Marketing Consultant". From here, Amazon's goal was to simply get traffic, redirect this traffic to do a search within Amazon, and serve up anything that might be somewhat related. Well, in this case, I am in no way affiliated with Amazon and so there was nothing to serve up.

So the question now becomes, why did Amazon choose my name? Obviously there is a few other options with even higher search totals than I... why didn't they get chosen? Well, the answer is they did. Michael and I searched out the other keyword options that Overture's tool provided and found that Amazon.com was indeed listed on the first page for what seemed like every one of them, some mind you had over a million pages ranking for that term. Here are a few snap-shots from Yahoo's search results:

So, again, how is it that a website, such as Amazon.com, comes to rank for a term without actually having the term, or a variation of it, on its pages? Furthermore, how does Amazon.com outrank a million or so other relevant listings (17 million for the term "Internet Marketing Consultant")? Gosh... I just don't have a clue.

To sum things up, what you've just read is a THEORY and a THEORY only. I would never suggest that Amazon.com is actually doing any of these things... or even using spam-like cloaking to get their pages to actually rank for keywords they have no business ranking for. That would be wrong. Instead, we'll just have to continue to blame Yahoo! and their ranking algorithm, which is obviously flawed if it's showing up such irrelevant results.