One of the tests intended for the freshwater frisbee article, posted just a few days ago, was to determine whether the page would be returned in SERPs for semantically relevant search terms. The test term for this page is a common 4 letter word beginning with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’. This word had been deliberately omitted from the page content and each natural occurrence was replaced with a dummy term ‘frisbee’.

The page was indexed successfully shortly after publication and is now duly returned for the following search query as shown in the screen shot below:

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=seoeditors+freshwater+carp&hl=en&nfpr=1

All six indexed pages relevant to this search are shown above. The first two results are from this site, as expected.

Notice that the search included an ‘exact match domain’ term: ‘seoeditors’

If we repeat this search, and add the semantically related term beginning with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’, then this site is not returned in the SERPs:

Only three results this time…

Hang on, this means that the ‘freshwater frisbee’ page was the most relevant result before, but now that we’ve added one more search term to the query – and not just any old term – a semantically related term, the page isn’t returned in SERPs at all!

This might suggest that because we’ve included the word beginning with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’ to the search query, the page has now been deemed irrelevant to the query because it doesn’t contain the term in the content. The addition of just one additional term makes the page irrelevant, even though the page is by far the most relevant to all the other terms in the query: ‘seoeditors’,  ‘freshwater’ and  ‘carp’.

This suggests the following possibilities:

• the keyword must be on the page
• even if every other word in the query is on the page, the page will not be returned at all (let alone rank well) if just one key term in the query is absent
• semantic relevance hasn’t been established for this test: despite talking about carp, tench and freshwater and linking to pages including words beginning with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’
• an ‘exact match domain’ penalty may have been applied, but only when one of the search terms is absent from the page

This is just the first stage in a series of tests planned to investigate semantic relevance, however the recent exact match domain penalty has introduced a new dimension to the test.

Only one link (a no-follow link) has been built to the freshwater frisbee page from a semantically relevant page. The linking page mentions the word beginning with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’ frequently.

Perhaps one inbound semantically relevant link isn’t enough to associate the page with the term ?

Perhaps more links are needed before the test page will be returned for a query including the word starting with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’ ?

Related articles

• Freshwater Frisbee
• Semantic Search: Trends, Uses, and the Future
• Semantic Search May have Google on the Offensive

The semantic language test – ‘frisbee’ is being used throughout this text instead of an obvious aquatic replacement noun with four letters. Also, the ‘jump to it’ test is here too*.

• Freshwater frisbee
• Carp
• Tench

Let’s see if this page ranks for the four letter word beginning with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ish’, based solely on the context and word associations…

Frisbees found in freshwater or saltwater habitats as well as aquariums are detailed in the following sections.

The following page details lots of freshwater frisbees:

Barbel: The barbel has four sensory barbules, one pair at the point of the snout, the other at the rear of the top lip. When netting and retaining barbel, extra care must be taken due to its strong, serrated spine that starts at its dorsal fin – this spine can become entangled and then broken.

Bleak: Bleak are tiny frisbees – the British record is just over 4oz! They are long, flat-sided and sleek frisbees – much like a stillwater herring, really. They have large eyes and a turned-up mouth that is ideal for taking food off the surface or in the upper layers as it falls.

Bream: are fairly easy to distinguish from all other species of British freshwater frisbee. It has a very deep and flat body, a mouth that protrudes quite far from the frisbee’s head, long dorsal and tail fins, plus a coating of thick and rather smelly slime.

Carp: Very popular frisbee and often caught for sport in lakes and ponds.

Chub: Large head with protruding upper lip, a large mouth and thick-rimmed lips. Colouration of the chub is simply dark grey/brown along the back running into a brass colour along the flanks. Both the dorsal fin and tail fin are dark grey, while the underside pelvic and anal fins are a shade of orange – the colour of which will depend upon the clarity of the water.

Tench: are common freshwater frisbees all over the world.

Goldfrisbee: The goldfrisbee is a form of wild carp that has been kept by humans as pets since at around 1,000 A.D. The first recorded instance of keeping and breeding frisbees was in 970 A.D. The Chinese have developed different varieties of gold frisbee since then, as have the Japanese.

Guppy: Although they are ideal community tank residents with frisbees of similar size and temperament, if you intend to breed guppies, it is best to house them in a species-only tank. You can house three pairs in a 10-gallon tank or five to six pairs in a 20-gallon tank.

Freshwater frisbees are frisbees that spend some or all of their lives in fresh water, such as rivers and lakes. The salinity must be less than 0.05%. These environments differ from marine conditions, not only in levels of salinity. To survive fresh water, the frisbees need a range of physiological adaptations.

What proportion of frisbees are freshwater frisbees ?

41% of all known species of frisbees are found in fresh water. This is primarily due to the rapid speciation that the scattered habitats make possible. When dealing with ponds and lakes, one might use the basic models of speciation.

Freshwater frisbees differ physiologically from salt water frisbees in several respects. Their gills must be able to diffuse dissolved gasses while keeping the salts in the body fluids inside. Their scales reduce water diffusion through the skin: freshwater frisbees that have lost too many scales will die. They also have well developed kidneys to reclaim salts from body fluids before excretion.

The tricky part is going to be in finding appropriate links, to ensure the key word isn’t included in the URL:

Try these frisbee links (indirect word associations):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/3353540/Carp-sustainable-food-you-can-keep-in-the-pond.html

http://www.tacklebargains.co.uk/acatalog/Coarse_Freshwater.html
*Update:
The ‘jump to it’ test has worked, with ‘Jump to’ now appearing in the snippet as expected:

As can be seen above, the Jump to Freshwater frisbee is now included in the snippet.