You raise a great point that if our site gets to page one we had better be ready for humans to judge it. I’m amazed at the all the short-cuts and tricks that a lot of IMers play as they attempt to game Google. Just “Do The Work” and produce great content that solves problems. Stick with that mindset and you will be so much better off in the long run. And you’ll sleep better too!

In the report Google gave this page as an example of a Relevant Page (ie a good example)
http://www.edmunds.com/honda/pilot

1) Keyword density for Honda Pilot; Honda; Pilot; are all way over 1%
If google is supposedly counting symonyms then the keyword density is close to 5%!

2) This site is a Lead Generation CPA /Affiliate site!
Check out the “Affiliate Program” Link in the footer

to quote
“Edmunds.com is the number one source of new car leads in the industry.”
“Publishers who become Edmunds.com Affiliates earn $4.75 for every new car lead form completed on the Edmunds.com site because of their participation.”
“Join the Edmunds.com Affiliate Program through our trusted third-party affiliate tracking partner, Commission Junction.”

Assuming Google isn’t stupid (debateable) has anyone got any rational explantions?

Yes, many of us do the mistake to forget some points before publishing. After struggling on different websites, I finally managed to download from a forum. Tomorrow, I am traveling and I think that will be the best thing to pass my time in the journey.
I have put a lot of efforts on some of my websites and blog to rank them. I don’t want to lose rankings for some of the reason. I will read this 2-3 times and understand the whole idea.
Your article is excellent and specially the tip about this ebook. Thanks a lot for sharing this.

Google through 4 different companies has maybe 200,000 people trained and working on these projects daily. Hundreds more are added week in and week out. As an insider who works on the project and helps get other people on the project I can tell you the manpower is indeed there. Also there is a task-per-hour ratio that has to be adhered to that varies from company to company. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next 24 months a half million people weren’t working on this project. The pay isn’t shabby either $15-30 per hour of work.

I would have said what James said “focus on what the customer wants” and results will follow, but this post has really made me think. I guess we cant assume and when we look at facts such as 501 recent changes in the algo! then surely we need to be trying to ascertain what some of those are..the thought of human raters though! mind boggling…surely these are only used for perhaps industries such as the financial sector or influential industries??? that perhaps I could understand or comprehend!.. just a thought.Thankyou jennifer for some food for thought.

Can you supply the search query that brings up the doc?

I have not read the Quality Raters guide yet but I am sure will help me/us to understand more about what Google is looking for and how we can become better creators and publishers of high quality content that will not only please the algorithm, but ultimately and most importantly, please the manual reviewers.

There’s a chance your ‘luxury hotels’ keywords raised a flag during a manual review.

– keywords look excessive
– keywords could annoy or distract a real user
– keywords are stuffed below the fold

A few years ago, some webmasters saw an “eval.google.com” referrer link but I don’t think it’s visible anymore.

Check out Google’s reconsideration requests to find out what happened to your site. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/reconsideration-requests-get-more.html

Yours, Marc

i may have beaten you to it 😉 http://www.netlogisticsuk.com/blog/google-hates-seos-seo-is-officially-the-hardest-job-in-the-world

Hi Deane / Rocktivity

I am trying to figure out why the site got hit.

It is clearly relevant.

I was thinking, could this be it. In the footer of the page, Luxury Hotels is mentioned quite a lot, could this be it ?

Thanks