how is it that my PR is high for my key words on google and MSN, but non existant on yahoo?

*photo removed*

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Yahoo has become very fickle lately. It has been suggested that Yahoo likes RSS/XML feeds and seems to rank sites that are listed in their directory. Another factor that you could be experiencing is Yahoos new sandbox. Also something else to consider is Yahoo loves on-page optimisation and cares less about backlinks and seems to have reduced its factors for density levels for your keywords. I have also noticed that Yahoo does not like the use of homepage links for real estate sites and does not care for the use of anchor text within your pages.

i dont understand any of what you just said..sorry, kind of new and trying to soak in a ton of information.

so if you could maybe explain what these are:

RSS/XML
sandbox
on-page optimisation

thanks. so from what im hearing a lot of is that yahoo is a completely different se.

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Tom - I think you're misinterpreting PR. PR is Google's Page Rank. I'm assuming you're referring to serps (search engine placement). Correct? These are different things.

I was #1 in Yahoo for a very long time with my main kw's on my oldest site. Recently got "dumped." Nowhere to be found. I, and others, feel it was a dupe content issue because of my host but I've noticed Yahoo seems to take so long to make any changes. However, my newest site is now on Yahoo's 2nd page for it's main kw's & is slowly creeping up.

Some simple explanations:
rss/xml - feeds you can subscribe to and place on your site such as real estate news feeds, etc., that get updated & changed.
sandbox - a term for what is considered to be the imaginary place where new sites are held for an amount of time before they attain search engine placement.
on-page optimization - properly using keywords, header tags & paragraph headings, bolding, proper page set-up & so much more!

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S.

ahh, so i couldnt say pr2 on msn and pr3 in google then could i? it should be serp2 in msn and pr3 in google, yes?

where would be a good place to get an rss/xml feed?
how long does a site stay in the 'sandbox'?

the site im working on has been online for about a year i think - but does the base 'homes339.com' give the rest of the spin off pages the same attention? if not, would it take a long period of time for a new page to be indexed/cached?

and if i add my own meta tags (i think thats what its called) would that be the same as adding original content? i'll give an example:

<title>Alabama Real Estate</title>
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="0">
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT="Alabama Real Estate">
<meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="alabama, real estate, realtor, broker, homes, home, house, land, property, for sale, sold, sell">

i dont know what 'expire' or 'content' mean, so i didnt do anything to those fields. would changing the state name on every page make it individual, or is my directory still a clone of every AA directory out there.

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PR is Google's "page rank" only. It's a number from 1-10. Well, until it gets PR it's 0 & some pages that had PR have dropped to 0 for whatever reason.

Serps are the position your site has in the search engines. For example, one of my sites below has a PR4 in Google and a search engine position of 2 in Google. So MSN & Yahoo & Google & every other search engine show serps, or search engine positions. I think what's confusing you is when someone says they "rank" well in Yahoo or MSN or Google, meaning they have good serps, not necessarily high PR. You want the highest number from 1-10 for PR but the lowest number, like 1, for serps.

The importance of PR is argued by many & isn't judged to be as valuable as it once was. Serps are what you're really after.

I don't use feeds so can't answer that one.

There is no definitive time in the sandbox. Some can emerge after 3 months (that's quick), 6 months, 9 months, a year or more. My only site that has decent Google position took over a year, but I did make a domain name change which certainly caused a delay.

However, my newest site shows up on page 1 of Google for some obscure keywords that I'd probably never get a hit with. It's nowhere to be found for targetted keywords. So that's why the sandbox theory is discounted by many. Technically, I just am not ranking for my important keywords.

Page title is very important for all search engines. Meta keywords is not used by all engines but I put mine in anyway. The description is important and is what is shown on the search engines. Each page should have its own title, meta tags and description. I really don't know those other items.

Original content is the on-page content you add to the site for people to read. Meta information isn't going to always be original because many will have page titles that are exactly the same & sometimes will have exact meta keywords (or very close).

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S.

sorry for not understanding very well - but just to make sure:

if my site is on the 1st page in a google search for my may key words, i have a PR 1 site, right? but on page one im the 3rd site down (#3) so would my position be 3, and my pr be 1?

and i noticed one of my directory pages has been cached, but i dont understand why its the only one out of 60 or so, i did the same thing to them all in terms of changing them, and it was all within an hour from first to finish -

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i dont understand - the 'cached' link above says it doesnt exist, but i have a screenshot that says it does...how is that?

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No Tom, PR does not state where your site falls on a search engine's page. The only way I know to quickly find the PR of a site is with the Google toolbar I had to download. Do a search for Google Toolbar and download it. That toolbar will be on your browser (I think Firefox has it built in automatically now) & you'll always be able to see the page rank of any site you visit. This is a rank of each individual page in a site. This is not where the site falls in Google's search engine.

In your example your search engine position would be 3. I'm on my husband's computer & he doesn't have the Google toolbar so I don't know what your Google PR (page rank) is. You might want to do a general Internet search on Page Rank so you can better understand what it means.

I can never figure out Google's indexing & caching, myself. I also have a screenshot of a particular page as being indexed but when I do the check on the full url it shows it can't be found. I guess it's different datacenters that come up per search with Google.

Also, I had a cache problem since switching my site to a new host with my state pages. They are still indexed but only a few are cached. I'm still patiently waiting for the rest so I don't know how they pick which ones to be cached when. I get visited by Googlebot a lot and don't know why, with all the visits, I can't quickly get these pages re-cached.

Also, I've added some new sub-pages (3 clicks from home page) that have been up awhile yet haven't been cached. I realize they're deeper down so it will take longer but I'm surprised it's taking this long. Seems like I'd get even 3 clicks from home pages cached quicker in the past.

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S.

i've been doing some reading on PR today, and its all still soaking in but i'll get it eventually. i cant seem to get the toolbar on my browser. i have ff 1.5 (the newest version) and it did come with a goggle search bar, but it doesnt show the pr of any pages i go to - says i cant install it for some reason. maybe tomorrow i'll uninstall ff and reinstall it and see what that does - i've done a lot of customizing blindly if you will, so thats probably why. thanks again for the tips.

checked my PR from a random site:

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